


End of the World With You

by shinyeevee



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Cute, F/M, Female Sole Survivor - Freeform, Love, Rating for later chapters, Romance, and a rocky relationship that begins with the pumpkin man, and maybe some spoilers, and some fluff, and some lovin, john hancock - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-07 19:32:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 20,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5468360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinyeevee/pseuds/shinyeevee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe Nora was going crazy.  Or she was finally adjusting to life in the apocalypse, which included nervous thoughts about guys without faces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Memory Den

 “These…I’ve seen these before.”

Irma flicked the end of her cigarette and looked at one of the pods outlining the room.  “Yeah?  Well you must be hallucinating, my girl.  I’m running the only memory den in the Commonwealth.”

“No,” Nora struggled, furrowing her brow, “it’s…nevermind.”  It was a _before_ memory, at the same convention that introduced Sanctuary Hills as the first suburb for the future.  Maybe she just drudged it out of her memories because it was the same day they signed up for the House of the Future – which they obviously couldn’t afford, but then again, who could afford nice things back then?

“So are you going to get in one?” Irma urged, stamping the end of her cigarette out in a dirty ashtray, promptly lighting a fresh one.  Nora wrinkled her nose at the smell of the curling smoke framing Irma’s face.  “Listen, I’ll just give you a free trail.  How about that?  Then you can come back any time you want and relive your little heart out.”

What would Nora even relive?

Maybe the green grass.  Maybe the bake sales or stopping by the gas station for snacks before going to the park.  Obviously her wedding day came to mind, too.  Nora knew what Nate would have done – he would have sat there and relived his very first visit to Fenway Park.  But what about her?  What was her one chance to remember fully?

“Fine, I’ll try it out.”

It felt like seconds passed before she immediately regretted it, even though she was strapped into the machine almost twenty minutes ago.  The memory consumed her, flaring her senses and sending her on a kind of high that she never experienced before – that being said, Nora didn’t have any experience with highs in the first place.

She was looking at Nate.

 _He needs to shave_ , Nora thought offhandedly before realizing where they were.  The crychambers.  She was trapped inside the one across from him, shivering in her barely-insulated suit as her pod slowly defrosted.  Nate was looking up at her, his eyes the same soft brown that she fell in love with when they were seventeen.  And in his arms was a baby.

_That’s my baby boy._

“This is the one,” someone said from beyond the pods.

Nora knew what was going to happen next.  Her brain began to pound with pain as the situation began to make sense, even if she wasn’t supposed to remember anything else but the memory at hand.  Something horrible was going to happen, and Nora began to pound on the glass to warn Nate.  Maybe if she could just… _warn_ him about –

There was the man, looking at her child and husband with the same offhanded expression someone would use if they were trying to decide what shampoo to buy at the market.

Nora’s mouth couldn’t open.  She couldn’t do anything that didn’t happen in the memory.  She watched as her husband began to struggle, someone mishandling her baby as he began to stiffen and cry.

A gunshot.  A nefarious look from the bald-headed man.  Then Nora felt her bones freezing solid again, her fist still pressed against the glass as if she thought she was strong enough to break the glass.

Moments later, the world was submerged in a steep darkness, warm and foreign yet at the same time fleetingly recognizable.  She heard arguing, distant and shrouded in the same film of sleep that swam through her brain.

“Why are you putting her _through_ that?” A strangely familiar voice asked.  It was a bit throaty, still juvenile, could have easily passed as someone who moved in down the street.  Nora sleepily tried to remember the other young couples in Sanctuary Hills.  Who was it?

“I didn’t assign her the memory, she – she asked for this one, somehow – something about _Nate_ , I didn’t know,” Irma muttered from afar.  _Irma_.  Chain-smoking, sultry Irma, sitting and pretending there wasn’t a shotgun under her skirts as she sprawled on her chaise.

The first voice growled, “Get her out of there, sister.”

Irma wasn’t from the memories from before.  She smelled stranger, closer to something that Nora recognized now.  “I can’t, she’s in the middle of – you don’t _know_ this technology, Hancock.”

 _Hancock?_ Nora struggled to remember who he was, too.  From the museums in Concord?  _That_ John Hancock?  No, she’s never met that guy, let alone hear his voice.

Everything was beginning to defrost – her bones, her lips, the edges of her brain.  _Hancock_.  The murdering drug lord who presided as mayor of the town she was currently passing through.  Who stabbed a thug in front of her, leaving his body on the street as a welcoming present.  Of course he couldn’t be a Founding Father of America.  He didn’t even know what America _was_.

Watching Nate was just a memory.  That was it.  Seeing him wasn’t even real.

The pod hissed as the latches released and the lid slowly tugged upwards.

Lights blurred in Nora’s eyes temporarily, reminding her of how it felt to ride the elevator up from Vault 11 alone – blinking as the world suddenly pieced together, completely unlike what she wanted to see.  There was no rebuilding, no government, and no home to come to.  It was just her and the erratic robot that obviously needed a few bolts from over the years.

 _There was no Nate_ , Nora thought as she squinted at the room.

Irma and Hancock were standing above her, both of them attentive and worried.  Well, if scar tissue and thinly-veiled face muscles could _look_ worried in Hancock’s case.  Irma, on the other hand, also looked a bit scared – most likely for her well-being than Nora’s.

“I am…so sorry,” Irma whispered, reaching to cover her mouth as she struggled with more words, “I put you through that…”

“It’s…”  Nora almost flinched at the sound of the gunshot still ringing in her ears.  It wouldn’t go away for a long time – she knew that already from the first time around.  “I’m alright, I _did_ ask for it, didn’t I?”

Hancock extended his hand, Nora took it instinctively.  His strange, ruddy skin almost sent a shiver up her spine, except she was too polite to actually blanch from his touch.  She ambled out of the pod and quickly fluffed her clothes, breathing deeply for a moment as if it would help settle her stomach.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Irma asked.

“What’s a free trial without a bit of mayhem?” Nora huffed.  She looked down at her Pip-Boy, the lovely blue interface showing her the time.  “Shit.  It’s too late to get a room at the Rexford, isn’t it?”

Hancock shrugged as he dove into his pockets for something.  “I have a couch in my office big enough for you,” he offered while Irma excused herself quickly to the other room, most likely escaping the awkwardness of facing Nora again.  “Guarded by a couple of good guys, I’ve got some food in there…”

There weren’t many options on the table anyways.  Nora could hunt down a spare mattress or sleeping bag out on the street, except it was the middle of winter and she had nothing but the clothes on her back and a good stash of caps at the bottom of her traveling pack.  A room at the Rexford was cheap, but she knew the doors didn’t lock from experience.  And the grumpy woman handling the front was probably asleep by now…

While she was debating her slim options, Hancock withdrew a small tin can before popping it open and offering it to Nora.  She blinked at the small purple tablets before looking back up at him.  “Mentats?” She guessed, having encountered them before.  Not that she ever taken drugs, but stumbling across them and taking a couple to sell was almost habitual now.

“They make me feel smart,” Hancock told her with smile.

“I…no thank you,” Nora said as she made up her mind.  She could make it for the night on the street.

“If you say so, sister.”  Hancock picked a couple of the pills off and popped them in his mouth before storing the tin can away once more.  “Alright, my office is just down the street.  Beats sleeping out in the cold.”

Nora struggled to come up with a reason why she wouldn’t go with him besides the fact she still thought drugs were bad two hundred years after social cues stopped mattering.  “I have…a place in Diamond City,” she offered halfheartedly, since that was _blocks away_ with monsters and mutated bugs standing in the way.  Not to mention the empty feeling that she couldn’t escape when she tried to settle inside.  “I could just go…”

Hancock waved his hand in the air.  “Not a good plan, sister.  Listen, if this is about money, I’m not offering services to ya.  Free of charge, one night only.”

“And that comes with your company?” Nora guessed, raising an eyebrow halfheartedly.  She didn’t feel like joking around, with the gunshot ringing her ears and her feet sore from walking to every god damned place in the Commonwealth.

“Hey, that wasn’t _my_ intention.”

Nora’s neck burned as she narrowed her eyes at him.  Sleeping in the street suddenly sounded like the best idea in the book right now.

Except he said he had food.  And Nora’s stomach took over her thinking.

“Fine, I’ll come.  But no funny stuff, or I'll gut you.”  Nora leveled her eyes with Hancock, who stood almost a half a foot taller than her and could obviously hold her off with one arm.  He nodded, pressing his lips together in amusement as she hastily grabbed her belongings – a think jacket and backpack full of her worldly possessions.

 

Nora woke up the next morning _warm_.  Which, by far, was the most amazing thing that’s happened to her since she left the vault.  Not even the tip of her nose was cold from the frigid nights that usually blew through the holes in Sanctuary’s walls.

 The table was hastily cleaned of drug paraphernalia while she slept.  Save for a bottle of water, a stray holotape and an ashtray, Nora didn’t see any of the chems or money that harassed the poor table last night when she got there.

Nora realized the reason she was cold wasn’t from the blankets Hancock let her borrow.  His jacket, frayed and thick and smelling vaguely like cigarettes and rain water, was draped over Nora like a second thought.

She froze as though it might bite her.

“And so she has risen,” Hancock murmured from the corner of the room.  She heard a deep intake of breath before checking over her shoulder.  Hancock released the Jet from his mouth to smile at her.  “Like the room?  I thought I should clean if I had a bit of company.”

Nora’s tongue was fat and dry, and her eyes were sore and crusted from sleep.  She yawned, stifling it with the back of her hand while taking a quick, shy look around.

The rest of the room was cluttered but currently drug-free, the terminal in the corner a bit neglected with a sheen of dust layered on the screen.  But it looked more or less like a living room: two couched faced each other, there were dressers and tables shoved against the walls.  To be honest, Hancock was probably doing a bit better than live than Nora was, and _she_ wasn’t trying to be a criminal.

“I…how long was I asleep?” She asked hoarsely, a bit embarrassed as the night came back to her quickly.  Hancock watched her husband die on the screen outside of the pods at the Memory Den.  He tried to protect her, which was a wild notion Nora couldn’t even _begin_ to figure out.

“Almost twelve hours.”

“That’s…absurd.”  Nora exhaled through her nose.  Usually she got one or two – _five_ if she was pushing her luck.

“It’s the truth, sister.”  Hancock set down the inhaler and strolled over to where she was, careful not to get to close.  Maybe he knew how she reacted to ghouls in the first place and let Nora have her space.  “And… _shit_ , well, sorry about the memory den.  I didn’t know that happened to you.”

Nora shrugged as she popped the can open and examined the contents, sniffing hesitantly.  It wasn’t that she distrusted Hancock, but she hadn’t exactly encountered a nice ghoul in a pirate hat before and didn’t really know what to expect.  Except that she previously watched him kill a man.

But he also gave her his coat when she was asleep, unaware and not exactly expecting much from him.  And cleaned for her.

“It’s okay,” Nora told him after a long sip of the water.  Clean, purified.  It ran a bit expensive for cans like this in the Commonwealth now.  “It’s not exactly like I was having the time of my life two hundred years ago either.”

“What would you have relived back then?”

Nora didn’t think before she replied, “Sex.”  It slipped from her mouth, and she clenched her jaw as if she could snatch the word from thin air.  But it was _true_ – after Shawn and the stress of finding a job when Nate returned home, things kind of dried up in the bedroom area.  Had she visited the Memory Den two hundred years ago, she would have most likely relived the softest intimate moments she could remember.

Hancock smiled at her, although he had no lips so it looked more like a carved pumpkin grinning back at Nora.  “You and I,” he retorted, wagging his finger at her before pulling out a box of Mentats, flipping the lid with a smooth flick of his thumb, “are going to be great friends.”

 


	2. Holotapes

People were muttering that Hancock was souring as a mayor.

It was Nora’s fault, of course, since _she_ was the reason Hancock stabbed the thug when she arrived and _she_ killed Bobbi after their deal went south and Nora discovered Bobbi’s plans to break into Hancock’s storeroom.  She didn’t like spilling blood, but Nora didn’t want to burn the bridge with Hancock – especially if that bridge had Fahrenheit guarding it.

“I don’t bother listenin’ to them,” Hancock told her as they returned to his office, where Fahrenheit still stood guard inside.  Nora flinched back from the guard’s expression before taking a seat facing away from her.  “I’m fixin’ everything that’s wrong, sister, that’s what matters.”

And yet Nora still felt guilty.

There wasn’t a lot she could do to make up for it – it wasn’t like she could miraculously bring two dead people back to life or tell every single drifter in town that Hancock was, despite his immediate nature, a good person.  Nor did she necessarily _believe_ he was a good person, at least not yet, they barely ventured beyond the gates without being pinned down by a couple of nasty super mutants.  There weren’t a lot of jobs to help the citizens of the Commonwealth in the couple blocks between there and Goodneighbor, either.

But there was still _something_.  She sensed it in Hancock, the same _something_ that made her look up while she was studying in the library to meet Nate’s –

Nora sucked in a deep, sudden breath as her heart squeezed tightly in her chest.  She wasn’t going to compare _Hancock_ to _Nate_.  Ever.

“At least you’re a lovable son of a bitch,” Fahrenheit was saying over the ringing in Nora’s ears, “Maybe that’s why a pretty girl lets you follow her around.”

“I thought that was my amazing good looks,” Hancock told her.

Both Nora and Fahrenheit immediately replied, “It doesn’t give you a sexy vibe.”  That was probably a sign of how often Hancock referenced his looks in comparison to how many girls wanted to sleep with a ghoul, if only once.

Hancock shrugged while he vigorously shook an inhaler of Jet.

Fahrenheit crossed the room aimlessly, plopping down on the other end of Nora’s couch as she said, “People are just trying to sound important these days,” she explained while pulling out her own inhaler – _is there someone besides Preston who doesn’t do drugs_ – and fitting it over her mouth.  After a few deep breaths of Jet, Fahrenheit finished, “Stirring up a bit of trouble is fun.”

“Tell that to Nora here.  She won’t even let me kiss her.”

Nora frowned, although her thoughts were still wired on Nate.  “I don’t let you kiss me because I think you’re a scarred up asshole with a drug problem.”  And that Nora used to have someone to kiss, but now that he was gone she didn’t want to find a new pair of lips.  Nate was supposed to be her last everything, for the rest of her life.  Last kisses, last hugs, last everything.  She didn’t want to just _move on_ from that.

Besides, her and Cait settled the matter entirely.  They both agreed that if _anyone_ deserved Nora’s sincerity, it certainly was not god damned Hancock.

Fahrenheit frowned at her.  “What’s wrong with a drug problem?”

“She says it makes my breath smell bad,” Hancock told her before shooting Nora a dark glance.  “Sis won’t even talk to me when I’m high anymore.”

Nora concentrated on her nails while Fahrenheit wheezed.  “That’s…fucking hilarious,” the guard said between hits of Jet.  “You know, I’ve been trying to get off this shit for a while now.  Maybe bad breath is a good reason.”

“Oh _no_ , it doesn’t apply to you,” Hancock emphasized before shooting a light-humored look at Nora quickly.  “It doesn’t apply to Cait either, by the way.”

Cait was trying to _quit_.  That’s why.

Admittedly, chems bothered Nora.  A lot.  She didn’t shake the _before_ mindset yet, even if she was on the road with two chem addicts and frequently watched them obtain their fixes.  At least Cait was trying to hear her out on sobriety, albeit it was a difficult conversation since Cait needed to get high first to endure it.  And Cait wasn’t exactly a good person to begin with, either – she didn’t even understand why Nora was _nice_ about things.

And Cait and Nora were almost as close as sisters by now, although they were at each other’s throats for some time in the beginning.  Her problem with drugs was like Nora’s grandpa’s problem with gambling – it was just a family matter at this point, discussed during holidays after one too many drinks.

Yet Hancock was different.  He was the epitome of a good person – Nora watched him chase a cat for almost a mile for a little girl before.  He was a murdering, cussing, drug-taking good person and it confused the _hell_ out of Nora why he found her so interesting to follow.

So maybe she set a little higher standards for Hancock than she did the cage fighter.  Nora was hoping he’d rise to them sooner or later.

“So have you been here before?” Fahrenheit asked, tossing the empty Jet cartridge on the table – which Hancock promptly swiped up, not bothering to chastise his guard on cleaning techniques in front of Nora.  “To this place?”

“Boston?” Nora asked, wrinkling her brow.

Fahrenheit vaguely waved her arms around to encompass the entire room.

“ _Oh_.”  The Old State House – which used to be a museum that held remnants on a history that the world sort of forgotten.  Nora nodded curtly, trying to remember what it looked like when she last visited in high school.  Colorful, definitely.  Cleaner.  “Less…drugs, more exhibits.”

“Have you been anywhere else near here?” Fahrenheit pressed.  It wasn’t a new question to Nora.  A lot of people wanted to know what the past was like – from someone with a fresh face, probably, since Nora assumed a lot of ghouls would be able to paint the same picture as she could.

“I grew up around here.”

Another understatement.  Nora walked through the ruins of the university she attended, found the same room of the desolate hospital she was birthed inside.  It wasn’t just that she _grew up_ , everything about Nora was formed on the streets of Boston.  Whatever people saw in her now was a perfect reflection of the twenty-three years of life before the bombs fell.

And seeing Boston deteriorated to _this state_ , most of the city untouched by settlements and given to raiders and mutants, it almost hurt as much as losing Nate.  Nora saw the fibers of her spirit dissipate with every crumbled building she walked past.

“What was it like?” Hancock asked, his voice different from Fahrenheit’s curious tone.  Hancock was always quieter with Nora than other people, as if she was a stray cat and he was trying not to scare her off.  Which _aggravated_ her because it was working.  He was the only person in the entire god damn apocalypse who wasn’t expecting her to just _adjust,_ and it pissed Nora off because Hancock shouldn’t be the one to understand her so well.

“Thinking about it makes me wished I tried harder remember it more,” Nora told him, fumbling with the sleeves of her coat while the corners of her eyes unexpectedly stung, “I know the buildings and the banks and the streets and how it felt going to baseball games, but I should have concentrated harder on every single detail.  Because I miss the details.  And my mom.  I really miss my mom.”

Like the grass.  The sound of the baseball bat clapping against the ball.  Or the Sox fans rising in their seats, crying and screaming as their team _finally_ headed to the World Series.  Nora wished she remembered the way clam chowder tasted when it was fresh, or even just studying in the damn library – the smell of old, crisp pages of well-cared for books was probably something Nora would kill to encounter again.

Because she remembered her mom, but she couldn’t quite recall her mom’s laugh.  Or what cake flavor her dad bought on her sixteenth birthday.

Nora hastily blinked, covering her face momentarily as if she was trying to fix her hair.

“You alright, sister?” Hancock asked.

“I’m fine, just thinking.”

Hancock patted his pockets before frowning at Fahrenheit – a bit of a comical frown, Nora noted, his lipless mouth curving drastically downward.  “ _And_ I don’t have any more Mentats.  Fahrenheit, would you…?”

“Go get you drugs?” Fahrenheit sighed.  “Of course you forgot.  Okay, I’ve got a spare tin…”

She got up, still grumbling before making her way towards the door.

Hancock watched her leave before hauling himself up, starting for the door.  “What are you doing?” Nora asked, narrowing her eyes and Hancock stood in front of the door and fished an old key out of his pocket.  The lock made a clicking sound before he turned back to her, still a bit preoccupied.  “If this is how you intend on seducing me, I’m just going to tell you right now that I’m willing to stab you.”

“I just wanted to ask you a couple private questions,” Hancock told her, raising his hands in the air.  “Don’t shoot me now, sister.  Not when you haven’t experienced me fully yet.”

“What a shame,” Nora said, shaking her head, “that I never intend to, either.”

Hancock kneeled down in front of her, reaching up momentarily to adjust one of the General stars on Nora’s lapel.  It was an unconscious correction, yet made Nora’s cheeks burn as his fingers accidentally flicked her exposed neck.  They hadn’t exactly _touched_ many times before, except for the occasional brush of their hands when exchanging weapons.  Hancock’s dried, strained skin still spooked her.

“I just wanted to know the street your parents lived on.  Do you remember it?”

 _What a strange question_ , Nora thought.  But she answered anyway.  “Fairfield.  Their house was a gift from the bank my dad worked at.”

Hancock whistled slowly.  “One of those big ones?”

Nora nodded, even though her throat felt too tight to speak about them – especially to Hancock, who was probably the last person she’d expect to confide in.  “Prices were rising – there were food shortages and stuff, even before I was born.  My dad, he found ways for the bank to save money so they could give bonuses to employees who had families.  So they gave him a huge house, and my mom split half of it for her free clinic.”

Hancock raised a brow – or, well, where the brow was supposed to be, but now was just a hairless bump above his eye.  “A free clinic?”

“If people couldn’t buy food, do you think they’d afford a doctor?” Nora scoffed.  She sniffled at how good her parents were.  They were always like that – upstanding, kind, generous, always so grateful for everything.  Her parents even had a reserved spot in Vault 81, but they gave the reservations away to pair of newlyweds.  “Mom worked at the hospital and stole supplies so she could use them on families.  She was a pediatrician.”

“What is that?”

“She helped sick children.”

Hancock nodded to himself.  “So _that’s_ where you get it from,” he said, pointing at my chest.  “You’re just like them, you know.”

Nora raised an eyebrow.  “I threatened to end your life.  Not many doctors do that.”

“You’ve met Doc Crocker, sister.”

That, at least, send a hollow laugh out of her.  Hancock grinned, and although Nora still felt a little miserable, it was kind of nice to see how pleased he was at cheering her up.

 

Almost a week passed, in which they both traveled back to Sanctuary to help further work on the Settlement, when Hancock asked Nora if they could speak privately.

Cait, who hid out in the remodeled guest bedroom of Nora’s old house to avoid Preston’s daily speech about drug use, frowned when she overheard.  “Don’t spoil the goodness inside of her,” Cait threated from the bed, holding a magazine inches from her face as she spoke, “Or I’m going to gut you.”

“That’s funny,” Hancock called into the room, “Nora said the _same thing_ to me before.”

Cait smirked as she flipped a page.  “Then I taught my girl well.”

Nora waved her down before pulling Hancock into the living room.  “Sorry about that,” she said as she popped a cap off a Nuka Cola, “I’m trying to teach her to be nicer.”

“It’s not working, sister.”  Hancock leaned against the counter and waved off Nora’s offer on a beverage.  “Just wanted to show you something, that’s all.”

Nora drank a swig of the Nuka Cola while Hancock hunted through his pockets – how many pockets did a Founding Father need in his jacket, anyway – before pulling out a series of old, dusty holotapes.  He slapped them on the counter before grinning at her, as if Nora would be able to recognize their contents just by sight.

Or perhaps she _could_ recognize them by sight.

She handled one before running her finger over a familiar ding in the corner of the holotape.  It couldn’t – or maybe it was – Nora’s head snapped up so she could look at Hancock quizzically.

“You don’t even want to _know_ how many raiders camp out on Fairfield now,” Hancock told her conversationally.

“This is…”  She knew what it was, but her voice was caught in her throat.  Nora was scared that if she actually voiced what she thought the holotape contained then it might just dissipate in her hands like ash.  “How did this survive the bombings?”

Hancock shrugged as his eyes darted away from her.  “Okay, I admit, since they were in a damn good safe, I couldn’t just open it myself.  So I had a little help from a nosy reporter who tailed me to your old house.”

“I didn’t even tell you which house I lived in.”

“There’s only one house in Fairfield with a red cross above the door,” Hancock reminded her, reaching forward for her Pip-Boy.  Nora was so stunned, gripping the holotape with her free hand, she didn’t even flinch when Hancock touched her skin again.  He worked on popping one of the holotapes into the free holotape player.  “And from my experience, red crosses mean _medic_.  Which, I guess was what your mom was.”

Nora didn’t even know what to say.  Hancock’s left hand stayed on her wrist, and she couldn’t even register the strange sensation of his skin while he spun the dial on her Pip-Boy.

Suddenly, a voice filled the air between them.

“Nora Jean, this is your mother,” Nora’s mom noted, speaking a bit too loudly.  She tapped on the recording device, the fuzz filling the air.  “I don’t know how this thing works – your father just got it for us, these new holotapes, but I don’t know why we would use them if the telephone works just as well for talking to you.”

“It’s just a nifty thing to have around the house,” Nora’s dad piped in behind her mom.  Nora’s throat swelled as she heard her dad, almost _seeing_ the whiskers of his mustache scratch his lips as he talked.

“Yes, but she comes home every weekend anyway,” Nora’s mom said quietly before turning back to the recording device.  “Well, honey, I don’t quite know what to say.  I’m excited that you’re coming home tomorrow to pick out a Christmas tree with us.”

That was her mom’s voice.  _Her mom’s voice_.  It felt like it was years since she heard it – the sound of pure, calm.  Nora’s mom wasn't worried about whether or not she was going to be killed by raiders, or if she was going to starve to death on the road.  She probably was just fretting about if Nora was eating at college, or the patients she had to tend to off the clock.

Hancock said nothing as he listened to the tapes, his hand gently moving closer to Nora’s fingers.  She didn’t meant to move, but suddenly Nora was gripping his hand as tight as she could, fearing that if she let go then she might collapse on the floor.

“Is she bringing that Nate boy with her?” Nora’s dad asked.  She heard scuffling as he roamed closer to the holotape, his clothes rustling as he bent towards the speaker.  “Nora, although I support you finding true love, I want you to know that boys are inherently evil until their thirties.”

“Don’t say that, she’ll be mad at you tomorrow!”

“It’s true!  Have you ever met a proper young man in college?”

“I met you, Jerry.”

“Exactly.”

Nora laughed breathlessly, her chest caving in as she closed her eyes.  Her parents always bickered like that – they loved each other to damn pieces, but they yapped at each other every waking moment of the day.  If Nora closed her eyes, it was like watching them banter over breakfast again.

“Well, _I_ think Nate is a fine gentleman if he’s caught Nora’s attention so quickly,” Nora’s mom emphasized into the speaker.  “I’ll make sure to tell your father that he’s out of his mind.”

“Does Nate like the Sox?” Nora’s dad added, “Because if not, then he’s sleeping outside.”

Nora’s mom groaned loudly.  Hancock chuckled at that.

Their fingers were still tangled together tightly.  Nora didn’t flinch away from the contact this time.  She ran her thumb along the slope of Hancock’s while her mother continued, “Well, now it says this holotape is running out of time, so I’ll make this quick.  We love you _very_ much, Nora, and you’ll always be our little girl.”

“Unless you start rooting for the Yankees,” her dad added.

“ _Jerry_.  Well, we will still see you tomorrow, Nora.  Don’t forget that college isn’t _just_ about studying.  Have some fun, meet some new friends.  Don’t be afraid of new things, alright?  I know you get a little anxious, but it’s all going to be fine.  As long as you don’t do drugs.”

Nora’s dad laughed in the background.  They heard Nora’s mom mutter about how to turn the holotape off before it began to fuzz and sharply clicked as the holotape ended.


	3. Friendship

“So tell me about him, sister.”

Nora looked up from where she was chopping carrots, the knife borrowed from Hancock and thoroughly washed with vodka before she even touched it.  “Tell you about….Preston?” She guessed halfheartedly, only aware of so many men at Sanctuary.  Many of the settlers had names, Nora just…lacked the time to remember most of them.

Hancock snorted, leaning against the counter with his tricorn hat tipped forward.  Lately – after the hand-holding incident – Nora’s found herself a little more comfortable around the ghoul.  She didn’t even flinch when their hands brushed anymore, and definitely wasn’t at the edge of her seat when he was milling around.  “Nate – your husband, Nate?  Same guy in the holotapes of your parents?”

Ever since they were rescued from her parent’s house by Hancock (and in extension, Piper), Nora’s been listening to their voices every night.  They mentioned Nate quite a few times, although it stirred wrong in Nora’s gut when Hancock was around to hear it too.

“What about Nate?”

“What was he like?  You told me you used to be a lawyer.  What did he do?”

Nora sliced a carrot a little too harshly before saying, “Nothing yet.  He just left the army.”

“Military guy?”

“You know, between me and him, I really thought _he_ would do better out here.”  Nora dropped the sliced carrots in the purified water that boiled on the cooking stove.  “Nate was generous and kind.  I won’t ever come across someone quite like him again.”

Hancock nodded curtly.  It seemed like he didn’t like the answer very much, but Nora wondered if he expected it to be that way.  “Sounds like a catch, sister.  I’m sorry that he died.”

“Me too.”

“You’re wrong, though.”  Hancock handed her the gourd next to his elbow.  She examined it quickly for any leftover dirt she might not have washed off before chopping the ends.  “You are doing great out here – and for being two hundred years old, you’re looking pretty fine.”

Nora ignored the compliment stiffly.  She couldn’t think of something to say that wouldn’t imply she liked it (she did) or sound too rude.  Instead, Nora said, “I wish I just risked the radiation than go in that Vault.”

Hancock’s reaction was almost immediately.  It looked like the sky darkened just from his expression as he quickly said, “That’s not something you should regret, sister.”

“Oh, so this was the master plan?” Nora challenged, waving the knife at her old kitchen – which was gutted in the last few weeks, changed so swiftly that it was almost foreign to her now.  “My son is lost somewhere out in this world, my husband is dead and I am _stuck_ in the middle of the apocalypse.  Sometimes dying in the atomic blast that ruined my life sounds better than this.”

“What if you ended up feral?” Hancock told her sharply.  “Or you were the only one to survive anyway?  Listen, sister, that Vault might have been hell for you, but you’re here now.  That’s important to _me_.”

Hancock’s eyes – so black and unfathomable – leveled with Nora’s seriously, their hands almost touching on the counter.  Nora felt the air crackle around the two of them, and her brain thought wildly about the severe moment they were trapped in.  If one of them moved – if Hancock walked away, or if Nora turned briskly to the stove – the seconds would snap away, ripped away from her like a stolen heirloom.

She didn’t want to say anything.  There wasn’t even much to say – _sorry_ didn’t cut it.  But all Nora heard was that she was _important_ to him.

Hancock made sure to note that the drug he took to become a ghoul was worth it.  Except something changed when it was Nora.  It started to seem that Hancock’s entire worldview altered when it came to her.

Finally, Hancock finished by saying he had somewhere to be.  He paused, his mouth open as if he wanted to tell Nora something, before slapping the counter and walking away.

Nora swallowed the lump in her throat and began cutting the gourd again.  Maybe it was contact high from being around Cait and Hancock, but Nora could almost imagine she was slicing away at her own heart.

Later that evening, Nora found Hancock sitting on a patio chair outside the little shack he designated as his house.  It built upon the old foundation of an actual house, but the wooden shack more or less served his needs fittingly.

“I just wanted to apologize,” Nora offered, shifting on the balls of her feet.  The night was quiet, a bit calmer than the days here, with people laughing over supper and inviting their neighbors to join at their houses.  it could have truly been Sanctuary Hills - except a little more rusty and with two-headed cows.  “I said something a bit insensitive earlier, and I just can’t bear the thought of my favorite ghoul being pissed off at me.”

Hancock looked up from his cigarette, which was stubbornly refusing to light.  “Oh, I’m your _favorite_ ghoul?” He asked, slowly smirking.

Nora felt her neck mildly burn.  “Don’t push it, Hancock.”

“Too late, sister.  Now I know how much you care about me.”

“Not very much,” Nora emphasized, trying to make it clear she was already regretting this meeting, “In fact, if a deathclaw appeared right here, right now, I would probably shoot you in the leg and run while it was eating you.”

Hancock was grinning at her.  Nora should have just went with the original plan and sent Codsworth over with a casserole, except she didn’t know if that was still proper etiquette.  She crossed her arms tightly over her chest as Hancock replied, “Oh, it’s fine.  I’m willing to get mauled by a deathclaw any day for you.”

He winked at her.

_Is it still too late to just go back into the Vault and wait out eternity?_

“I…”  Nora swallowed and rubbed the back of her neck.  She wasn’t good with – whatever this was.  Even when she first met Nate, she tripped over her own brogues and ended up embarrassing herself.  This was just a bit more apocalyptic.  “Okay, I’m going to go finish um, finish up cleaning before Cait gets back from Concord.  She hates when I leave books around the house.”

Hancock raised his hairless brow.  “Oh, of _course_.”

They stared at each other for another long, increasingly awkward moment before Nora finally turned around and stomped away.

 

There was a lot of emotions inside her.  About Hancock.

On a positive note, he didn’t seem to mind Nora’s utter confusion at their pseudo-friendship.  He just continued his minimal drug usage around her, whistled at her slowly when she shuffled out of her room in the morning, continued being gentler to Nora than most other people.  It didn’t seem like he was flirting, either – Hancock was just genuinely trying to be nice while she struggled with herself.

But Nora knew.  It was _obvious_.  Hancock smiled more when he was around her, made sure she had the last scraps of food when they were out on the road together.  Once, he even pressed his hand against her lower back to gently guide her around a particularly steep hole in the road.  Something was simmering in Hancock, and he was polite enough not to talk about it when she didn’t want to.

“What would Nate want for me?”  Nora asked Cait, pacing around the small living room one day while Hancock, thankfully, was handling a raider problem for her at the Red Rocket’s budding settlement.  Cait was not the best person to talk to about this – Piper was Nora’s first choice – but she was easily the most accessible for conversation.

“He’d want you to be quiet while I’m trying to nap,” Cait said from the couch.

Nora ignored the response.  “It seemed like – I don’t know, it seems like forever ago since he died, even if I remember it like yesterday.  And I still miss him – _every day_.  But Hancock is nice.  He's...sweet, in a way.  It's nice to have his company, and if I'm honest with myself, I  _like_ his company.  Quite a lot."

“Hancock is a criminal and you deserve better than criminals,” Cait moaned.  She appeared to given up on her nap for the time being, opening one eye to glare at Nora.  “Of course, this is advice from _me,_ so I hope you have a better person to talk about this."

“I can’t find Piper.”

Cait shrugged before closing her eye again.  “Then you are shit outta luck, my girl.”

Nora withheld her frustrated sigh and charged out of the room.  She might have loved Cait with her entire heart, but the girl was just not _good_ with emotional talks.

The only place that was secluded from other settlers but safe enough to think was the Vault’s entrance.  Nora started on the path, her brain running a thousand miles an hour as she made her way across the decaying bridge.  Preston volunteered to fix it before, but Nora promptly shut him down:  she didn’t want anyone else coming up here, not when it was the only spot she knew was vacant of living beings.

Nora didn’t press the button for the elevator, instead resorting to sit in the middle of the chipped paint so she could look at the landscape.  Sanctuary looked so _bright_ from the hilltop, Nora listening to the generators from even this far.  And she could still remember the bombs dropping on Boston, the buildings still standing hiding the sun behind their crumbling exteriors.

On the way to checking if Hancock was finally home, Nora noticed something wrong in the distance.

It didn’t take her too long to get up and investigate.

Red wasn’t a popular color in the yellowed, desolate wasteland.  Especially if it was a color that her favorite ghoul wore.

“Hancock?” Nora called out nervously, hoping to find the location where she thought she spotted him.  He wasn’t supposed to be over here – beyond the hills of Sanctuary or Red Rocket.  The raider problem wasn’t even in this _direction_.  “Hancock, you over here?”

Nora’s heart thudded against her rib cage when she saw the red frock coat lying in the dirt just ahead, partially hidden by a stray bush.  She sped up, suddenly sprinting towards the coat while pulling her pistol from its holster.

“Hancock –”

She didn’t get to finish her sentence.  The bushes rustled behind Nora as she neared the coat, the raider smacking her head with a crowbar.  With a strangled, pitched cry, Nora collapsed on the ground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> based on the less-than-pleasing experience of hancock teleporting from red rocket in the middle of a fight. in which i had to tangle us out of. also: since im a broke collegiate with only one talent, you should think about commissioning me for work! my tumblr (lavellanfirst.tumblr.com/commissions) lays out pricing and such. it's /really/ affordable so just keep it in mind! thank u for reading my hancock fic even if it is literally word vomit about a jack-o-lantern


	4. Invitation

Nora stumbled forward, catching herself on a dead tree.  Her gun clattered by her feet, and the world dangerously tilted as she tried to make sense of what happened.

Another hit from the crowbar slapped against her spine.  Nora guffawed, doubling over in the grassy hillside as she wildly tried to find her gun.  Blood began to clout her vision as the air began to spin around her head.

The next swing of the crowbar cracked into the tree just above her cranium.

 _Roll_.  Nora tucked her legs and threw herself down the hill, trying to make it out of reach of the raider.  She stumbled, catching herself at the bottom before slamming into someone else.  _Shit.  Shit.  I’m dead.  I am so dead.  They’re going to skin me –_

“Hey, beautiful,” Hancock growled, pushing another shell into his double-barrel shotgun.  With his free hand, he pushed a pistol into Nora’s hands and said, “There’s two behind me.  Tried to steal my damn jacket.”

“What an offense,” Nora said breathlessly, her eyes wide as she took him in.  She thought he was gone for a second – she thought she really lost him.  “You okay?”

“I’m a bit chilly, but that’ll be taken care of soon enough.”  He gently guided Nora behind him before aiming at the raider charging down the small hilltop.  “Just stay behind me, sister.  I won’t let em hurt you.”

Nora raised her pistol, trying to steady her aim on one of the heads coming above the hilltop.  Yet her hands were shaking with the thought of killing someone – she wasn’t _used_ to killing people yet – except they couldn’t get away.  She was fine with people shooting at her, attacking _her_.

But they were trying to kill Hancock.

Nora lost a lot of things in this world – there were gaps in her chest that she knew she would never fill.  But she was okay with losing her humanity too, as long as she didn’t lose someone else she cared about.  Not another person was going to be taken away from her.

The first bullet pierced through the raider’s neck.  His head cracked back and his feet flew from under him before he slammed into the dirt.  The raider didn’t move after that, a pool of blood encircling his head like a halo.

Hancock’s body braced and coiled against her when he fired a shot into the raider that smacked Nora with a crowbar.  Sher heard his body thump the ground before Hancock swiftly turned around, shielding Nora with his lean torso as he aimed for the last raider.

“Got him,” Hancock muttered.  He didn’t hesitate pulling the trigger.

Nora’s ears rang form the bullets, and she realized she was still clenching the pistol in front of her like someone else might jump out of the bushes.  She blinked, the pain blooming throughout the middle of her back and the top of her head.  Blood trickled from the head wound, dripping down a side of her face.

“That’s gonna scar,” Hancock pointed out after a moment.  Nora couldn’t speak, simply staring at him.  Hancock’s face was surprisingly easy to read: he was worried for her, pissed off about the raiders, obviously aching to know what she was thinking.  “Nora?  You good?  Tell me you’re good.”

“I’m…”  _Good_.  That wasn’t the word for what she was feeling.  Nora just killed a guy, the body count hanging over her head slowly filling up the longer she was in the Commonwealth.  But Nate killed people during war, didn’t he?  And he was fine, too?

 _No, stop thinking about Nate._   He was gone – dead, frozen, out of time.  The people here, alive, breathing – they were all that mattered now.  Nora took a deep breath through her nose before reaching up to touch her bleeding face.  “This _is_ going to scar,” she confirmed, her forehead creasing as she looked at Hancock.  “On my face?  I’m going to have a scar on my _face._ ”

“Face, head.”  Hancock ran a finger along her hairline, placing the wound much deeper, near her ear.  “Curie’ll patch you up.  How’d you find me?”

“I saw your jacket on the ground.”

Hancock sighed wearily.  “And you didn’t grab my jacket, did you?”

Nora felt her lips tug into a smirk as she shrugged at Hancock.  “Now _that_ would just make you happy.”

They stood there, surrounded by corpses and bleeding and bruises, Nora’s head wound made everything sway a little to the side.  Neither of them particularly felt like moving – breaking eye contact was almost as painful as getting hit by a crowbar.

Nora could imagine how easy the conversation could have been: Hancock would just say what he actually felt about her, and she could struggle for a way to imply he was essential to her emotional survival while also adding that she was still not quite stable from watching her husband be killed.  Or they could just work it out later, make it easy for now.  She just didn't want to survive out here alone, pretending that pain didn’t exist or that she wasn't terrified she was going to lose him like she lost Nate.  And Nora suspected that Hancock would agree with her if she just said the words.

For a while, they were barely inches from each other, just breathing.

“You killed for me,” Hancock suddenly said, his eyes searching Nora’s face for something inscrutable.  “You don’t kill.  But you shot a guy for me.”

“You’ve killed for me before,” Nora replied.

Hancock simply shrugged it off.  “Thugs don’t count, sister.”

“I hate when you call me that.”

“Sister?” Hancock asked.  Nora nodded, gnawing on her bottom lip as she watched him think.  “And why is that?”

Nora took a deep breath, opening her mouth.  But words just didn’t come out.  They were stuck in her throat, puddling at the bottom like they were too scared to show themselves to Hancock.  It could have been so easy.  _Just say it’s because you care about him more than being just a sister_ , Nora thought, and she had the words all lined up and ready.  But they didn’t budge.

Hancock framed her jaw with his fingers and closed Nora’s mouth for her unexpectedly.  “Why?” Nora asked, her word muffled since she didn’t have proper control of her jaw.  Her shoulders slack as the moment was apparently ruined by Hancock's corny joke on her.

He shrugged before moving in to kiss Nora.

It wasn’t like fireworks exploded behind her eyes when her lips met his – which were soft for being so scarred, not flaky and crude like she imagined it.  There was nothing more than just their lips, such a simple feat in the most complicated time of her life.  Nora stepped closer to Hancock, and all she could sense was him.  For a brief, world-shattering moment, the only thing Nora had to experience was engulfing her senses, a candle in dark room.

Then he pulled away, his face returning inches from hers.  And his eyes were glittering, enveloping every inch of her they could.

Nora realized she was not breathing.  She also seemingly dropped the gun, her hands clenching Hancock’s dirty white shirt.

“Thanks for saving me, sweetheart,” Hancock told her, releasing her jaw from his custody and kneeling down to swipe the pistol from their feet.

“You just kissed me.”

“You seemed a bit on edge about it,” Hancock replied.  “Was that not where this was going?”

Nora blinked at him.  “Of _course_ this is where it was going!”  She sputtered, narrowing her eyes suddenly.  “But then you _pulled away_!”

Hancock emptied the pistol of ammo, dropping the bullets individually in one of his pant pockets.  “Well, you’ve got a lot on your plate right now, and you don’t need some ghoul to be chasin’ after you until you’ve got yourself figured out.”  He slid the pistol into the holster on his hip before smiling cheerfully at her.  “ _That_ was just an invitation.”

“And invitation to what, exactly?”

Hancock slapped a hand over his chest before moving in, one more time, to fondly peck her cheek.  And then he began walking away in the direction of his abandoned red frock.  “Me, all of me, sweetheart!  Just say the word, and I’m yours forever!”

Nora felt her neck redden at the mere thought of _forever_ , or maybe she was turning red because Hancock was being so damn loud about it - them, whatever  _they_ were.

But he gave her what she wanted: both him, and time to think and heal.

“Wait for me!”  She shouted to his back, darting to pick up her abandoned pistol on the hill before sprinting to catch up to him.


	5. Strong Enough

Nora slung the heavy backpack of supplies over her shoulders, turning around to briefly wave at Polly before treading back to Power Noodles where Piper waited for her.  The afternoons in Diamond City were strikingly different of those elsewhere in the Commonwealth: the walls brought the people inside far greater security than even Sanctuary or the Castle could permit their dwellers.  It made even Nora feel safe, if just for the time being while she was scheduling shipments back to Sanctuary where there was still construction on ramparts around its perimeters, which would be quite the upgrade from the half-collapsed bridge and singular turret that they trusted to protect the entire town.

“Bought you a cup, Blue,” Piper greeted, pointing at Takahashi with her thumb, “We were having a _very_ interesting conversation.  Sources say you’re name isn’t even Blue.”

“It’s not Nora, either,” Nora replied, picking up the bowl and sniffing it hesitantly.  Although the water purifier in Diamond City was running properly, she didn’t know whether or not to trust the twelve-year old boy running the waterworks.  “So your source, although he can only speak one Japanese sentence, is mostly correct.”

Piper slapped down three bottlecaps as a tip for Takahashi and pointed at him.  “That, my friend, is some good intel.  You know what else he’s told me?”

“Probably something in Japanese?   _May I take your order?_ ”

“That you and one of our ghoul friends are falling in love.”

If Nora was strong enough, she was sure she would have snapped Takahashi’s bowl in half.  Nora glanced up, her eyes meeting Piper’s innocent, inquisitive expression.  “Did Cait tell you this?” She accused, wondering how many times she had to imply that their conversations were private before Cait completely understood.  Or maybe the cage fighter truly  _did_ understand the entire time, but threw trust out the window because telling everyone was much, much more rewarding.

“No, MacCready told me.  He said Cait told him, though.”

“Word of advice, Piper,” Nora told her quietly, trying not to let the all-consuming rage take over her usually calm mindset, “Don’t give out your sources if you don’t want them killed.”

Piper didn’t miss a beat.  “We both know Cait can take you out.  She’s just being polite and letting you live for now.”

Nora relented to trusting the noodle cup – maybe she just had a weakness for endearingly broken robots, considering she let both Curie and Codsworth stick around after both were still alive after a nuclear fallout – and slid onto one of the aging stools.  Piper leaned over and stole a few of the vegetable pieces, popping them in her mouth before waving down Takahashi’s attention for seconds.

“By the way, we aren’t falling in love,” Nora mentioned, poking at her bowl halfheartedly.  She and Hancock weren’t really doing _anything_ , really.  Even after the kiss, Hancock returned to his usual self and politely let Nora think about her options.  He didn’t show any infliction about the kiss or anything, mostly just grinning to himself when Nora caught him staring at her.

Piper shrugged.  “I get it, Blue.”

“We’re just so…different.”

“I’m surprised you said that,” Piper snorted, “Considering you and I attended the wedding between a robot and a man.”

Oh, _that_.  Nora did say that two very different people could love each other, right?  But what she felt for Hancock certainly wasn’t love, or the love she experienced in her last relationship.  Nora was frustrated, and anxious, but still calm when he was around.  Which made her want to hit something.

But not a lot of things in the Wasteland were small enough that Nora’s fists would work on them.  And not that Nora – who was pretty tempered still, even after her and Hancock’s run-in with raiders – _wanted_ to hurt people.  Even the bad ones.  She was still somehow Eleanor Jean from Sanctuary Hills, just with a rifle on her shoulder and a pistol strapped to her thigh.  And wearing old General clothes that she was pretty sure were stripped off the skeleton of the last guy who ran the Minutemen.

“Oh, and Geneva stopped by,” Piper said, struggling to keep the disdain from her face as she finished poking at her second bowl and moved onto Nora’s once more, “She said that the mayor has some important business with you.”

Nora coughed into her fist so she wouldn’t laugh.  Of course Geneva – who was surprisingly sweet if not a little lonely – refused to disclose the actual business talk with Piper.  Even _if_ she was one of Nora’s most trusted friends, who would most likely be at the meetings anyway.

Then again, Piper _did_ accuse Geneva of sleeping with the mayor the last time she was around.

It wasn’t the toughest decision to ignore the mayor’s request of company, considering Nora vehemently opposed him since the ghouls were ejected out of the city.  It was one of the problems Nora had with Diamond City in the first place, something she didn’t even think about until one of her first treks with Hancock: not even the guards who previously welcomed Nora warmly could look her in the eye when she was with him.

“How about we just ignore him?” Nora said instead.

Piper was all too welcoming for that course of action.

Having nothing else in Diamond City to take care of – Piper arranged groceries and care for Nat until the next time they came, and Nora didn’t find much to do in her house except seeing if there was dust on some of her books.  After finishing up with the traders – Myrna yet again implied that Nora _wouldn’t know_ if she replaced with a synth – Piper and Nora headed out, blatantly ignoring Geneva’s frantic waving from the box office above their heads.

Although walking through the ruins of Boston was more like gambling whether or not you’d run into a gang of raiders or super mutants (or in worse cases, feral ghouls), Nora never liked bringing a heavy along for the trip.  She preferred sneaking – darting through the shadows of the buildings, investigating the ground for any tripwires or mines.  _That_ was Piper’s specialty – she too, wasn’t used to a life where a gun might be your best friend.  Violence, in her terms, wasn’t the answer, and it mirrored Nora’s thoughts.

They made it through the outskirts of Boston without incident.

“In a fight against a super mutant and Cait,” Piper proposed as they crossed over a set of hills, cutting through the streets to avoid unwanted run-ins with ghouls.  Of course, the occasional mutated scorpion would dig itself out of the dirt to say hello, but that was nothing a nice tall tree couldn’t fix.

Nora thought about Piper’s challenge for a moment, clearing the bushes ahead of her with the butt of her rifle.  “Cait.”

“How about a deathclaw and Cait?”

“Cait.”

Piper made an agreeing noise in the back of her throat.  She squinted in the distance, gesturing towards the open expanse of road ahead of them before saying, “How about Hancock and Cait?”

Obviously Piper was baiting her to talk more about the situation with Hancock, but Nora immediately answered, “Cait.”  They looked at each other for a long moment, Piper searching Nora’s face before curtly nodding in agreement.  Of course Cait could win a fight against Hancock.  Even _if_ she harbored strange, confusing feelings for the ghoul, Nora was never one to bet on the underdog.

“Preston or Cait.”

“Cait.  That goes for Nick  too.”  Cait would kick the bolts out of Nick, and Preston was far too smart to even _initiate_ a fight with her, unless it was a civil debate about drug usage around Sanctuary.

“Cait or _MacCready_.”

That was certainly a hard one.

Nora stomped through knee-high grass, carefully watching for snakes or freshly overturned dirt.  She drew her rifle and pointed it towards the highway, just to make sure whether or not there were stray bodies that might pop up when they got closer.  “Cait,” Nora finally replied, pulling the scope away from her face to glance at Piper, “Unless MacCready is on top of a building.”

Piper shrugged.  “Tough, Blue, because if MacCready had the guts to shoot Cait down, she would ultimately survive.”

“And run up the steps of the building to dismember him?”

“Couldn’t say,” Piper said.  They started for the deserted highway, which was probably the safest route home for now.  “She’s survived up to this point.  Who’s to say she isn’t immortal?”

The idea wasn’t _entirely_ ridiculous, to be honest.

By the time they turned on the road that stretched towards Concord, and subsequently Sanctuary, the sun was beginning to set over the low hills in the distance.  Nora’s eyelids felt heavy, and she just wanted to go home and collapse in her bed.  Piper shuffled behind her, yawning between gulps of a Nuka Cola and pretending she wasn’t on the verge of asking if they were there yet.

“Shit.”

“What?” Nora asked, blinking rapidly to swat away the sleep.

Piper groaned.  “I _stepped_ in something.”

Nora saw Concord in the distance, close enough that she had been harboring a keen excitement to go home.  Instead, she turned around to look at Piper trying to kick something off the bottom of her boot.  “What’d you step in?”

“It…stinks.”  Piper raised her boot to Nora.  “Turn your Pip-Boy’s light over here for a sec, Blue.”

“Can we just wash it off at Sanctuary?” Nora complained.

“I need to see if I got it all off!”

Nora fumbled with the switch on her wrist, the light from her Pip-Boy suddenly exerting towards Piper.  Her shoe was surely still covered in red gunk, dripping back on the concrete where a sack of the same material was now visible in the middle of the street.

“What _is_ that?” Piper asked.

It was…human remains.  Nora blinked slowly before looking up at the sky as if God was perched on a cloud, cheekily grinning down at her as if this was some sort of joke.  Because, although the apocalypse was eerily macabre, only one certain sect of horribly nauseating creatures actually _collected_ the remains of their victims.  Which was much like a calling card that alerted most living species to stay far, far away.

And that horribly nauseating species was, in fact, super mutants.

“I really hope that they’re not going to be bothered with you ruining their décor,” Nora said dryly.

But of course, they were.  Nora’s ears twitched as she heard a rapid beeping in the distance, and she turned to look at the super mutant that was investigating their disturbance.  The super mutant, for some reason, decided that the easiest way to take out an enemy was to tackle them with a mini nuke and let it kill everyone in the radius.

“Run,” Nora told Piper quickly.

“What about you?”

 _Indeed, what about me_ , Nora thought in her head.  Instead, she jerked her head towards the outcrop of rocks near the hill.  “Go get Cait.”

“Cait?”

The beeping was coming closer.  A bulky shadow appeared over a small shack that neither Nora nor Piper saw in the dimming light, a small red flash indicating that Nora’s fears were confirmed.

“Go get Cait,” Nora repeated, this time a little bit squeakier.

 

Piper didn’t like running.

First of all, she didn’t regularly stretch her legs, so running was just an activity that was not realistic nor reasonable.

But on a more serious note, she didn’t like it was because she was leaving Nora alone.  Nora was the first person she met in a while that didn’t already form an opinion on Piper.  Therefore, Nora was Piper’s first chance at actually _bonding_.  Nora never asked for things to be off-the-record, or accuse Piper of using her for a good news story.  She just trusted Piper wholeheartedly, and leaving her to defend herself felt like…betraying that trust.

Piper tried not to think about the explosion that clapped through the air behind her.  She just needed to be _faster_.

Concord was quiet, like always, the raiders staying away from the same plot of land that a deathclaw once appeared.  Piper darted through the houses, launching herself past Red Rocket and across the bridge.  The thought that Nora stayed behind was flooding her vision, making Piper think the worst thoughts.

 _She_ wasn’t a heavy, she didn’t laugh in the face of danger.  _Cait_ did.  Even when she was high, the cage fighter never ran away from a fight.  It was so obvious and brave and stupid and _dangerous_ that it was just a running joke to Piper and Nora.  But when things got bad, Cait was that Nora trusted with her life.   _She_ was the one that came to save the day.

Piper’s heart sank when she saw Hancock sitting on a barstool next to Cait.  So she had to explain to _two_ people that she wasn’t good enough to handle her own against a brood of super mutants.

“Where’s Nora?” Hancock immediately asked when he glimpsed Piper running through the threshold of the bar.

Cait was halfway out of her chair already.  “Tell me where to go,” she demanded immediately.

“Past Concord, there’s a shack – they caught us by surprise,” Piper huffed.  Her side was in stitched, and her knees were knocking together from exhaustion.

Cait sprinted past her before Piper could give her further directions.  Of course, it would be pretty easy for Cait to find Nora – just follow the sounds of explosions and gunshots.

Hancock was out of his seat already, pushing shells into his shotgun as her hurried past Piper.  “Where are you going?” She asked, spinning around to watch the ghoul walk out of the bar.

“To make sure Cait doesn’t kill my girlfriend.”

“You’re not dating!”  Piper pointed out.  Despite the fact her brain was tumbling down on the ground of the bar, she was right on Hancock’s heels.  She didn’t know what she was more bothered by: the fact she didn’t stay and help, or everyone was so willing to run and fight.

Hancock shrugged as if it didn’t matter if they were dating or not.  In fact, it appeared he didn’t even _care_ if they were together.  He was just completely focused on the idea that Nora was alone and in trouble that nothing else really mattered.

“Hey.”  Piper tried to reach to grab Hancock’s frock – which was strikingly complimentary to Nora’s blue one, which Piper realized was not an important realization at the time – but he was too fast for her.  She began running after him, struggling to talk while doing so.  “She said to go get Cait!”

“Because she doesn’t want _me_ to get hurt,” Hancock growled.

 _Well, it’s really because we’ve once watched Cait beat a deathclaw to death with her bare fists when she was high_.  “Just let Cait help her.”

Hancock didn’t look back, but Piper could feel his disapproval.  He didn’t stop running, however, the flaps of his coats shifting in the cool wind of the night.

Piper swallowed the terror in her throat as they passed through Concord.  She was supposed to _run away_ from fights, especially ones where she was vastly overpowered.  But Cait was there.  And clearly Hancock wasn’t going to just turn around and wait for Nora to come home.

So what if she wasn’t one of the _heavies_?  Even if Piper struggled lugging around large guns and usually darted out of danger with Nora, it didn’t mean that she should just run away when danger came.  Especially if Nora would have refused to leave and stayed to make sure Piper was safe.

Hancock and Piper made it just in time to see another explosion.  He cussed under his breath before charging down the hill towards where two humans were still fighting through the mess.

Piper’s knees felt like they’d lock any second.  Her breath was shallow, and she was bone-tired from the journey.  But she saw Nora reloading her rifle before covering Cait’s charge towards the mutants and straightened her cap before following Hancock into the fire.

 

The last explosion took a chunk from Nora’s leg.

She resisted the urge to scream through her clenched teeth, aiming the rifle at the mutant trying to shake Cait off him.  The cage fighter punched the mutant’s ribcage, a splitting crack briefly breaking the sound of the bullets.  “Shoot _em_!”  Cait screamed at Hancock, tightening her hold on the mutant’s arm as she swung again.  “I swear if you don’t _shoot him in the head right now, I am going to kill you_!”

Nora’s fingers were shaking, but she pulled the trigger anyway.

Piper peeked from behind the edge of the shack wall and blindly shot at the mutant.  There were only one or two left, the remaining from the brood that they alerted only hours ago.

Hancock bent over Nora’s body briefly, slinging his arm around her waist before hauling her over his shoulder.  He lugged her to the corner where Piper was successfully sniping the mutant Cait was wrestling.

“I can take care of myself,” Nora guffawed weakly.  Beads of sweat poured down her face from the heat of the last explosion.  Her fingers didn’t let go of Hancock’s sleeve until he gently pried her off him.

“Alright, sweetheart.  Take care of Piper here,” Hancock said, slapping Piper’s shoulder briefly before swinging his gun up and walking towards where Cait was incoherently yelling.  It seemed to mostly be war cries.

Nora looked up at Piper, her eyes feebly narrowing.  “Why’d you tell him to come along?”

“He said you were his girlfriend, didn’t have much of a conversation after that,” Piper replied.

“Did you tell him we weren’t…that?”

Piper waved briefly in the air as Cait’s super mutant collapsed on the ground.  The second one roared inside the shack before they heard the exhausting, terrifying beeping that could only mean yet _another_ mutant decided the best course of action against them was blowing everyone up.

“C’mon brother, let’s get this show on the road,” Hancock grumbled as he and Cait led the suicider away from the house.  He gestured to Piper, pointing to the right hand.

Piper took a deep breath and thought about Nora, who was leaning against her leg for support.  She raised her pistol – which, realizing a bit late, was impractical to deal with super mutants – and fired.  The first three shots went into the mutant’s side, which did nothing but make him a bit slower.

Cait and Hancock were across the road now.  Piper pulled the trigger again, and this time the bullet hit the mini nuke.

Piper blanched from the explosion, yelping as the heat made her stumble back a few paces.

Everything was suddenly quiet as the rest of the mutant landed on the ground.  Piper wiped the sweat from her face and looked down at Nora, who was slowly blinking as the dust settled round the small encampment.  After a long inhale through her nose, Nora craned her neck up to check on Piper.  “Did you ever get that crap off your boot?”

“Haven’t checked yet, Blue.”  Piper leaned against the siding of the house while Hancock and Cait made sure the area was clear to move Nora.

“You came back for me.”

“That’s what best friends do.”

Nora raised an eyebrow.  “I don’t know, Pipe, I was _just_ thinking about how much I wanted to feed you to a mirelurk king.  The answer is quite surprising.”

The corners of Piper’s mouth tugged upwards.  “Oh, really?”

“Yeah, really.  Hey, you know that game we play…how about you and Cait?”  Nora asked, tenderly touching her leg for any debris.

“Cait would win,” Piper said immediately.

Hancock hurried to Nora’s side, softly tugging her on her feet.  “Just let me take your weight, sweetheart,” he muttered, his rough voice quieter as he helped Nora limp towards the way home.  Nora whispered something in his ear – or ear canal, considering most of Hancock’s ear was either gone or melted onto his skull.  The stopped a couple feet away, and Nora turned back to Piper slowly.

“By the way, I completely agree.  You would lose,” Nora added, her arms tightly wrapped around Hancock.  Piper nodded, crossing her arms tightly over her chest as Cait finished clearing the house for good supplies.  They would most likely walk ahead of Hancock and Nora, making sure Curie and some of the human medical trainers were ready for their arrival.  “But…I don’t know.  I think you’d put up a pretty good fight.”

Cait jumped out of the house, the door swinging behind her.  “What fight?”

“Between you and I,” Piper informed her as they passed Hancock and Nora.  The thought was ridiculous – it was more likely that Nora was going into shock than actually speaking the truth.  Still, it was a sweet sentiment.

Cait shrugged, slapping Piper on the back.  Piper pretended that it didn’t hurt, chomping down on her cheeks to avoid the painful cry simmering at the base of her throat.  “Who knows?” Cait asked, throwing her arms in the air.  “You’re cute enough that I might just let you win.”

Piper scoffed as Cait jogged ahead of her, scouting the entire route home just in case they’d run into trouble again.

“What are you smiling about?” Nick asked gruffly, wearing his night suit and standing guard at the bridge leading to Sanctuary.  It seemed that Cait didn’t just warn the medical team of their predicament, but the entire damn settlement.

“Nothing,” Piper said, glancing at Nick before skirting to her temporary housing above the bar.  She climbed the steps, looking back only to make sure Nora was safely in the hands of the medics before opening the door to her tiny bedroom.

The little _nothing_ kept Piper smiling until she fell asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tbh even though this fic is mainly about hancock/ss, i just got tremendously emotional over piper today and i needed a little time w her
> 
> send me prompts to my tumblr! i get bored easily and even if i'm writing this i don't really have a life so - link's in my profile :) thank you for reading and i hope you enjoyed this! <3


	6. Medic

Nora’s eyes slowly opened when Curie flashed the light in her eyes.  “Oh!  I am so sorry,” the bot piped up, moving the examination light away from Nora’s face.  She whispered something to the trainees before adding, “You are _incredibly_ resistant to needles; it is astonishing.”

Needles.  Nora grimaced at the thought.  She was always more of a nasal spray kind of girl.

“Why can’t I feel my leg?” Nora muttered.  Everything was hazy, and her body felt like it weight a thousand pounds.  She blinked away the stars that formed from the light and reached out to Curie.  “Please don’t tell me you cut off my leg.”

Curie made a long whizzing sound that reminded Nora of a sigh.  “I have applied a Stimpack to your upper right thigh once an hour since Hancock carried you here,” she explained, snipping a set of new white bandages.  “If you will be involved in explosions in the future, may I suggest coming along for on-sight medical assistance?”

Nora muttered an agreement before turning her head.

Hancock was sitting next to her medical cot, his hat tipped low over his face as he slept beside her.  One of his hands was set on his stomach, and the other reached out and stayed near her shoulder like he was checking her breathing before he fell asleep.  Nora turned on her side – Curie protested and immediately checked her leg to see if the wound reopened from the movement – and grasped Hancock’s fingers.

He stirred awake, his hand tightening around hers.

“Is everyone else okay?” Nora asked, squeezing her eyes shut momentarily.  Everything was a bit hazy through the medication, but thankfully she didn’t feel any of the wounds.

Hancock reached with his other hand to touch Nora’s face, prodding the small cut on her cheek lightly.  “You’re lucky you don’t look like me,” he said, leaving a tingling sensation from his fingers as he let them trail down Nora’s jawline, “And you ask how everyone else is doing.  _We_ aren’t the ones on the medical cot, sweetheart.”

“I also have been wondering why you think I’m your girlfriend.”

“I said it in a time of distress, sister.”  Hancock shrugged, squeezing her hand tightly.  “We’re still the same as we were.  Give me the call and I’m yours.”

Nora smiled.  “Oh, so any time before that…?”

“Still yours, but let’s keep that between you and me.”  Hancock smiled, jerking his chin towards Curie and the two trainees shuffling around.  “And them.  But doctor confidentiality, right?”

“I am not officially a doctor,” Curie intervened.  “Although I am properly trained to be a medic, I did not graduate medical school.”

Nora sighed through her nose and took a look at her leg.  They bandaged her pretty heavily – she couldn’t make out how bad the wound was, between the dressings and Stimpacks.  But it seemed she would be off her feet for a while, holed up in Sanctuary until the lower half of her would thoroughly heal.

Curie scooted the trainees out of the room to check on another patient.  She peeked through the doorway before she vanished for their privacy, promising to check back soon with Nora’s condition.

Hancock folded his arms against the mattress and grinned at Nora.

“Have you ever had…you know, a girlfriend?”  Nora asked, fumbling with her IV.  She yanked it out and offered it to Hancock unconsciously, and he graciously waved it down.

“A bit of an old world concept, but yeah,” Hancock replied, picking up the pitcher of water on the table and hunting down a clean glass in the drawer.  “I had a lady at one point.  Before my face melted off.”

Nora didn’t have to ask what ended the relationship.  Judging by Hancock’s tone, it didn’t take much to guess.  She could sympathize with the girl: it must have been hard to watch Hancock chasing his high like that, and then be forced to live with the consequences of his actions.  Nora might have even done the same, if she knew him before.

“What was she like?”

“The girl?” Hancock narrowed his eyes at the wall as he thought for a second.  He handed Nora the cup of water and said, “She was good.  Nice – liked getting high with me.  But she didn’t like how I turned into a ghoul.  And then she _hated_ when I tried to do some good with the town.  So she left.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for, sister.  I got you.”  Hancock grinned.  Nora didn’t point out that _technically_ they weren’t together yet, considering the fact neither of them wanted anyone else.  “How about you?  Anyone before your husband?”

There were certainly…boyfriends.  If they counted as such.  Even when Nora first met Nate, she insisted that they didn’t get serious so they could try to meet other people.  “Well, I dated a bit,” Nora allowed before suddenly frowning.  “You don’t think any of them could survive the nuclear fallout, too, right?”

Hancock raised a hairless brow.  “What?”

“As ghouls,” Nora clarified nervously.  “Do you think…my ex-boyfriends…might be ghouls?”

Considering her luck a la the vault, Nate’s death, Shawn’s kidnapping and the ensuing shit storm that immediately followed, Nora realized she couldn’t leave out any more possible ways her life could be ruined.  One of them was that an ex-boyfriend woke up after the bombs two hundred years ago and is now walking the earth, _probably_ aware that Nora was still alive, and looking to reconnect over a brahmin burger.

Or worse, an ex would accidentally venture into Sanctuary looking to settle and run smack into Hancock, which would then convince Nora _further_ that her life would be lived out better if she just froze herself for another hundred years.

“If your ex flame is a ghoul,” Hancock said, fighting the smile of his stupid face, “then I will _gladly_ welcome him to drink a beer with me.  I’ve always wondered what you were like before the world took a crap on you.”

Nora narrowed her eyes.  “A lot less pissed off, since I didn’t meet you yet.”

Hancock chuckled.  Nora was surprisingly used to his voice now – it was rugged, harsh, yet somehow still had a way of making her calm.  She looked forward to making him smile more, too.  He looked so _gentle_ when he was smiling.  Even if he was still the same killer she met on her first day at Goodneighbor.  “I know you’re into me, sweetheart, Cait made sure to tell everyone in this god damn place.”

“I am going to slit her throat while she’s asleep,” Nora informed him flatly.  She made a mental note to teach Cait, once again, what privacy meant.  It wasn’t even that _hard_ of a concept: she just doesn’t tell anyone else about their conversations!  Yet it felt like Nora was talking to a wall when she attempted to explain it.

Hancock reached for Nora’s hand again.  She let him take it, his warm fingers gently running the length of her arm and back down, circling her wrist bone.  “I would say I was happier, in a way,” Nora told Hancock suddenly, feeling the words effortlessly run out of her mouth before she had time to think, “But it was a different kind of happiness.  It’s not like right now.”

“Tell me about what made you happy.”

“Just…being alive, I guess,” Nora told him, her brow wrinkling as she tried to figure out _why_ she was happy.  It was hard to explain, even to herself: she didn’t need to think about how she felt back then.  Nora used to go to bed and think about how she spent her days, always piecing together the best parts – visiting her parents, going on boat rides, drinking hot chocolate in the middle of winter.  And then she would dream about it, looking forward to the next day like she was positive it was going to come.

And Nora just didn’t do that anymore.  Instead, she laid down on her bed and hoped no one died while she was asleep.

Hancock pulled Nora’s fingers up to kiss each of her nails slowly.  “What else?  How about your friends?  Or school?”

It was either the Stimpacks or Nora was deluded to tell Hancock everything about her past, but she continued anyway while allowing Hancock to run his mouth along the side of her hand and into her palm.  “I loved school.  I was – I got a degree, but I didn’t get to finish law school, so I couldn’t actually _practice_ law yet.  Nate wanted to have a kid and we – well, we had Shawn, and so I didn’t continue my education.”

“I think you would have made a good lawyer.”

Nora gave Hancock a small shrug, but she felt a little candle light inside of her chest.  Nate was great – amazing, he was a good father and husband.  But he never thought about her schooling very much.  To him, it was the reason they got together, but nothing much more than that.  It always made Nora feel _smaller_ than him, as if _her_ education was less important than his military career.

So it was nice to hear that she could have been great.  It was really, really nice.

“I think I would have been great, too,” Nora said.

Hancock’s smile really broke something inside Nora.  She didn’t know what it was, but suddenly the corners of her eyes began stinging.  Nate smiled at her like that – but his was always so confident, like he didn’t have to worry about Nora running away because he was the center of her world.  Hancock’s smile was just because he truly enjoyed listening to her, and Nora quite liked that.

In fact, there were a lot of things about Hancock that Nora quite liked.  He was really something different.

She pulled his coat sleeve and moved so half the cot was now free.  “Come here.”

“I’m not putting out tonight, sweetheart.”

“Who said _I_ was?"

Hancock threw his hands up in the air and rolled his eyes before clambering onto the cot.  He kicked his boots off and pulled the sheets over his legs, tuning on his side so he was facing Nora.  They didn’t kiss – Nora sure as hell _wanted_ to, but they just watched each other peacefully.  Hancock began to play with her hair, tucking it behind her ear and pushing strands out of her face.

“You know what I thought when I first met you?” Hancock asked.  Nora shook her head slowly.  “That you were going to cause a lot of trouble for me.”

“Did I?”

“Two people winded up dead in the first week and I’m right here.”  Hancock smiled at Nora softly.  “So no, not a lot of trouble at all.”

Nora smacked his arm, albeit lightly.  “Thank you for coming to help me against those super mutants.”

“It’s what I do, sweetheart.”  He leaned over and pecked the tip of Nora’s nose with his lips.  She wanted to crane her neck up and catch him in a kiss, but her skin burned where he touched her and she couldn’t do much but look at him.  “What did you want me to do?  Sit here and drive myself crazy, thinkin’ you might not come back?”

When Hancock was in trouble – when she saw his coat in the dust and her heart jumped to her throat – Nora didn’t even think about finding someone to help her.  She just acted: Nora could not perceive a future where Hancock was not there, too.

But this was the wasteland.  There was always a chance – a terrifying, earth-shattering chance that one of them would not come home.

It would be ridiculous to prolong all of _this_ just to have it slip through her fingers.  It wasn’t as if Nora was healing on her own: it was only moments with Hancock that she felt like she was making progress.  And say what she will about the _before_ times, but they lacked the certain zeal that Hancock provided.  He was the kind of person that Nora didn’t even know she wanted until it happened.

“So how about it?” Nora asked, arching a brow.

“About what?”  Hancock asked, momentarily bewildered by the change in subject.

Nora waggled a finger between them briefly before reaching for his collar – although she would have thought it was a bit ridiculous at first, she grown to love the idea of Hancock in his frock.  Maybe he should try on her blue, oversized coat sometime.  “Us,” she explained slowly, her eyes meeting his.  “This.  Um, I don’t know how to phrase it another way.”

“I admit, I don’t understand _why_ you’d want to kiss this ugly mug,” Hancock answered, “But I already stated it before: I’m yours if you want me.”

She shrugged.  It was really depending on the day whether or not she truly _wanted_ Hancock around, but Nora couldn’t argue that she didn’t need him.  He was incredibly, unbelievably essential to her survival.

“So does this mean you’re going to turn into a ghoul?” Hancock suddenly asked, scooting closer to her.  Their bodies pressed together on the cot from their knees to their chests.  Nora wondered if there was a possible way they could get any _closer_.  “I’m a long-term kind of guy.”

“I’m a long-term kind of gal,” Nora replied instantaneously.  “You see, I’m already two hundred years old.  I can do this for the long run.”

Hancock touched his forehead to hers.  “But are you willing to?”

“It depends.  I like you right now, let’s see how long it lasts,” Nora teased.  Their voices were quieter now, more like whispers in the empty room.  She liked how little proximity there was to Hancock’s mouth, yet they still weren’t kissing.  It was more intimate, a quieter approach to what they were doing.  It _fit_ the two of them.

Hancock wrapped his arms tightly around Nora’s waist and squeezed softly, planting a kiss on her forehead briefly before settling on the pillow.  “It’ll last,” Hancock told her confidently, closing his eyes.  Nora watched him breathe her in deeply.  It looked like he was trying to memorize this moment by heart.  “Trust me, sweetheart, it’ll last.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> do you ever think about how hancock can potentially die and just cry  
> yeah no i mean me neither whatever


	7. Liar

“So…where did she go?”

Piper shrugged violently, staring hard at the corner of the wall while Hancock looked blankly at the empty bed.  He was visiting Nora in the infirmary just the night before, clinging to her hand like she just might slip through his fingers.  And now she was gone – the bed was properly made, tightly folded around the edges, not even a note informing Hancock where she may be.  “Beats me,” Piper grumbled, blinking rapidly at the window.

“You know, reporters are pretty bad liars,” Hancock reminded her gruffly, “Especially when you are so eager to share the truth, Piper.”

She shifted on the balls of her feet.  “It _is_ the truth.”

Hancock exhaled deeply through his nostrils.  It would have been smarter of Nora to pick someone else to keep her secret, since Piper looked like she might have burst just from withholding the truth.  She shuffled, pretending to lean nonchalantly on the doorway before falling.  Piper caught herself, cursing under her breath as she used a stray table for support.  “Are you going to tell me where Nora is?” Hancock asked.

“Nope.  I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh?”

Piper pressed her lips together tightly and shook her head.

Someone else  _definitely_ would have been the better choice if Nora was trying to hide her whereabouts.  Hancock looked up at the ceiling for a few seconds, overturning every choice he had and examining his options carefully.  It would have been easy – and enjoyable – to yank one of the table legs and let Piper fall again.  Or track Nora down, seeing how lately there had been a trail of explosions and bodies following her.

Hancock sucked in a deep breath as he settled on his least favorite option, which included leaving Piper be.  “Tell me when my girl gets back,” Hancock told the reporter, patting her shoulder lightly before heading back out of the infirmary.  She flinched under his hand, probably assuming Hancock would torture her until she admitted defeat.

But it was alright.  If Nora didn’t tell him where she was, it was for a good reason.  He’d just make sure her place was cleaned by the time she got back, just in case Cait wrecked it already.

 

His name was Deacon, and Nora was still confused whether or not he was wearing a wig or if he found a good source for post-apocalyptic hair gel.

“So you’ve seen what happened to our old base,” Deacon said, gesturing behind them at the smoking mess that once was a donut shop, “which gives you a pretty good estimate how dangerous the job is."  

It looked approximately like everything else in the Commonwealth now: rubbed to ashes.  Nora stared at the building, the heat sticking to her skin from the near death experience.  Not that she would ever tell anyone – especially Hancock – it was near death.  That would just undermine her cause, which she realized after sitting in bed for two days straight with nothing to do but think.  “Do all your bases get blown up in the impending doom of the Institute?” Nora asked breathlessly.  Adrenaline still rushed through her blood, numbing the swollen ache in her calf.  She was barely healed when she tiptoed out of Sanctuary.

“Well, aren’t you a little optimist?” Deacon teased.

“I’m the general of the Minutemen,” Nora explained, “Trust me.  I know impending doom when I see it.”

Deacon snorted, shifting his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose and checking out the ashes of what once was The Switchboard.  “So what does the _general_ want with the Railroad?  Siding with us doesn’t exactly buy you political allies.  In fact, I’m pretty sure we’ve got enough numbers to count as a cult now.”

There was a lot that Nora wanted with the Railroad, actually.  She heard the holotape on Hancock’s coffee table before, sneaking it into her Pip-Boy when he was sleeping off a high.  And she already stumbled across a synth that the Institute rejected before: in fact, Nick was slowly becoming like a father figure, which was a surprise to the both of them.  And they were the reason that Nora was in this shithole, they might as well know she’s pissed off about it.

And what better way to get revenge against the people who took her son than to undermine every move they make?

“The Minutemen are here to protect the Commonwealth’s people.  I don’t think it’s necessary to clarify if they’re made of bone or metal,” Nora told Deacon instead, sliding her pistol back into its holster.  “Also, I’ve always thought it would be _really cool_ to be a secret spy.  Think about it: me, in a tuxedo, with a bowtie?”

Deacon cracked a smile at her.  “So you’d get into _this_ dangerous business just because you feel like it?”

“If you think this gig is dangerous, I can’t wait until you meet my boyfriend,” Nora muttered, squinting at the setting sun in the distance and biting the inside of her cheek.  Piper was going to burst soon.  She was sweet, and all that mattered was that she _intended_ to keep promises, but the girl was just too excited to _report_ things.  Nora wouldn’t be surprised if Hancock and Cait were halfway to her by now, a trail of fire and rage burning the horizon behind them.

“John Hancock of Goodneighbor,” Deacon immediately told her.  “I know of the guy.  Turns a blind eye in his town for us.  Also pretty adept with a knife.”

“And a shotgun.”

They started off southeast towards the ruins of Boston, both of them significantly slower with sleepy eyes.  Deacon, however, was not one to let silence just _be_.  He chattered aimlessly about literally everything that his mind wandered to, gesturing grandly as if they were onstage and the audience needed a little more convincing.  Nora nodded along, trying to catch up on the conversation topics while looking around for any oncoming hostiles.

“So what do you see in that ghoul, anyway?” Deacon asked, kicking around a round rock they found a while back.  He always half-jogged after it if the rock misfired in the wrong direction, in which he would scoot it across the ground where Nora patiently waited.  “Murderer, drug lord, a bit of a shady individual in my opinion.”

“And you _aren’t_ shady?” Nora asked.

Deacon cocked his head at her.  “Well, at least I’m _open_ about it, Nora.”

“He’s really nice to me,” she told him, kicking Deacon’s rock to their right so he had to go chase it.  “And protective, and funny…I haven’t met a guy quite like him before.”

“It’s probably because most guys don’t live after that much radiation exposure.”  Deacon waved his fingers in front of his expression as he jogged back to where Nora waited for him.  “Gotta admit, though, something about that mug is handsome.  I think it’s the soulless black eyes.”

Nora kicked his rock to the left this time, watching it soar through the air before landing in a plot of dead grass.  “He’s got a soul.”

“You can’t say that, your eyes get all big and weird when you talk about him,” Deacon retorted after retrieving his rock.  Nora idly wondered if she would be able to subtly train him to fetch before Hancock could teach Dogmeat.  “Listen, if you ever need dirt on someone, you come to me.  And I’ve got a _lot_ of dirt on Hancock.  Some of this stuff might make you gag.”

Nora wrinkled her nose at Deacon.  “And what if I don’t need dirt on anyone?”

“Then you obviously came to the _wrong person_ for that.  By the way, how’d you find us?”

“Piper.”

Deacon snapped his fingers.  He kicked the rock a couple feet ahead of them while grimacing.  “I knew she had something to do with it.  Every time I walk into Diamond City to snoop, she’s always hounding me with questions.  I can’t even begin to explain to you how many times I’ve said _no comment_ to her.  It’s like the words just don’t compute in her mind – like Takahashi, but a little more frightening.”

Nora got to his rock before he did.  She swung her leg, kicking the rock in a high arch through the air before watching it disappear over a nearby hill.  “Piper’s really nice, _and_ trustworthy,” Nora explained a bit too harshly.  “And Hancock is a good person, even if that statement doesn’t exactly agree with his actions.  You just take them at face value.”

“Oh?  And what’s my face value?”

“I don’t know, how much is it to get reconstructive surgery?”

Deacon guffawed as Nora picked up a new rock and offered it to him.  He slapped her shoulder kindly when taking it, observing it in the last rays of the sun with one eye squeezed closed.  “This might be adequate for my needs,” he informed her, tossing the rock in the air a couple times to weigh it properly, “and _you_ might be adequate for the Railroad’s needs.”

“They’re the only people fighting back right now,” Nora told him darkly.  “I’ll do what I need to.”

And it was true.  Something horrible woke up inside Nora’s belly while she slept off the drugs Curie gave her to dull pain.  She killed – she killed a _lot_ – and it was just another token of survival, just like how pretending fruitcake was delicious was something to endure two hundred years ago.  But if Nora _had_ to have blood stain her hands, she was going to do it for a reason other than her own survival.  She was going to _help_ people.

All of those emotions just simmered in her small, starved body and sometimes Nora couldn’t handle it.

 

Nora made it back to Sanctuary – after officially entering the Railroad and picking out her name (“I love the name Whisper.  It sounds so….mysterious.  And _sexy_ ,” Deacon made sure to say).  It was just beginning to be light again, and Nora was so tired she might collapse of exhaustion.  It took every ounce of her will not to curl up on the streets and fall asleep or ask Deacon – who know trailed behind her like a lost puppy – to carry her home.

“Take my bed,” Nora muttered, gesturing to her old blue house.  “I’ve got somewhere to be.”

Deacon grimaced.  “Aren’t you living with Cait?  The scary one?”

“Would you rather sleep in the hostel with the traders and brahmin?”

“Point taken.  I’m going to lock your bedroom door though.  Just in case.”

He veered to the left and hopped up the small step of Nora’s porch, silently sneaking into the house.  Nora passed by it, looking at the small shack that sat on the ruins of a neighbor’s house, a light still on in the small kitchen nook.  Her heart began to race as she hurried towards him, eager to see Hancock after spending even a little time apart.  It was ridiculous – honestly an incredibly embarrassing notion – but Nora was almost scared of being away from him now.  Maybe he would get hurt.  Or he might realize that she was too different from him.

Nora burst into his shack and immediately took her shoes off, shrugging her jacket onto the floor right after.  Hancock was still asleep, his arms tucked behind his head as he softly snored on his mattress.  He looked so lithe, so _frail_ when he was asleep.  Nora pulled an undershirt from the drawer by the end of his bed and replaced her dirty top with it.  She yanked her pants off and crawled into the small space between Hancock and the wall, pushing her face into his ribcage and kissing his side softly.

Hancock stirred from the touch.  He grinned when he saw Nora, her eyelids heavy with sleep as she smiled at him.

“How was the Freedom Trail, sweetheart?” He asked, running his fingers through her hair and kissing her temple.

“How did you know what I was doing?”

“Piper told Cait everything.  Took me, Nick, _and_ Garvey to hold her down long enough so she wouldn’t go after you.”  Hancock chuckled, his chest rumbling from the action.  Nora placed her palm over his heart and pressed closer to him.  “I missed you, girl.  My bed’s been a bit lonely without ya.”

Nora sighed into his tight, scarred skin.  She couldn’t be mad at Piper – the girl was just too righteous for secret-keeping.  But now she was running out of people to tell her secrets to.  “I missed you, too.  I’m sorry I didn’t tell you – I wanted to do it on my own.”

“It’s alright.  Railroad’s been good to people in Goodneighbor.  There aint a problem between me and them,” Hancock explained.  He lowered his face to hers, cupping her cheek tenderly.  The way Hancock looked at her made Nora regret leaving in the first place – she wasted an _entire day_ that could have been spent staring at her boyfriend.  “Hey, I’ve got you back now.  And I made sure Cait didn’t set the house on fire.”

“Good.  Someone from the Railroad’s in my room tonight, anyway.”

“Can we trust them?”

Nora struggled to answer that.  Hancock laughed as he waited.  “Yes,” she finally said, nodding as if it would help convince _her_ that Deacon was truly trustworthy.  Maybe the word _trust_ shouldn’t be applied to anyone in Sanctuary but Hancock and Nick.  And maybe MacCready, if Nora paid him enough.  “His name’s Deacon.  He’s a bit of an asshole.”

Hancock smiled at her.  “Sounds like the rest of the bunch, sweetheart.”  Which was true.  Even Preston was a bit of a pretentious fucker.  “So, is it time to cook you breakfast?  Or can we sleep off this huge hangover I have?”

Nora fell asleep smiling, clutching onto Hancock as if she could somehow make up for the lost time spent away from him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the late addition, the holidays were incredibly busy! also, just a small reminder, i'm taking in commissions for all sorts of literary work because it helps pay the bills :) if you are interested, head over to lavellanfirst.tumblr.com/commissions for more info!


	8. Bathtime

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: you know why this fic is rated m for mature audiences? its bc of this chapter. this is a very nsfw chapter

Most days were simple.  They went to the bar, they washed blood of their clothes, and they slept the afternoons away while Nora’s calf healed.

And then there were _these_ days.

Hancock curled his arm around Nora’s waist, lifting her away from the cooking stove where she was attempting a stew with Hancock’s scarce food supply.  She yelped in protested, writhing as Hancock carried her towards the bathtub filled with hot water.  “It’s too late, you’re too far gone,” Hancock told her as Nora curses swathed the air around them.  “There’s no turning back now, love.”

“I swear to _God_ if you –”

Nora’s threat was silenced as Hancock dropped her into the bathtub.

She gasped from the surge of heat, rising up through the water to cough up what she had swallowed.  Hancock laughed loudly over her cussing, shrugging off his old red jacket while she sputtered.  “You might want to take those clothes off if you’re taking a bath,” Hancock chuckled, unbuttoning his old, fraying top.  Nora glared at him silently from the tub.  “What?  You looked like you could use a good bath.”

“You look like you could use a knife in the ribs,” Nora observed sourly.  Although she was trying her hardest to let the anger swallow her whole, Nora knew it was never going to last.  She loved every dripping moment of this.

Hancock laughed at her while stripped his top off.  Now he was just wearing his dark pants, the belt already in the process of being loosened by his long fingers.  Nora tried not to stare at _that_ region.  She crossed her arms tightly over her chest, trying not to think about how she disregarded a bra that morning.  “Scoot over, sweetheart.  I’ve got to wash my hair.”

“You have no hair.”

Hancock grinned at her as he stepped into the bathtub and sank down across from her, their legs tangling together.  Nora’s neck started to flush at the feeling of his skin on hers, in a completely different setting than usual.  An inappropriate, wildly heated setting.  “You gonna wear your clothes the entire time?” Hancock asked.

He seemed mildly disappointed.  Nora tried not to grin at him.  “I’ll take them off.  Someday.”

“Ah, you hurt me, sweetheart.”  Hancock leaned closer to her, and Nora tried her damned hardest not to stare at his lips.  She had such a bewildering attraction to him that it completely unnerved her sometimes.  “I’ve seen your bare ass before, love.”

Nora shrugged.  “Maybe I’m just doing this to get back at you.”

“For what?”

Nora moved so that only one of her arms covered her chest so she could gesture at the bathtub.  “I was cooking.”

Hancock quirked an eyebrow.  “Oh?”

His hands began to weave beneath Nora’s legs, starting from the ankles.  She flushed, trying not to stutter as she added, “I know what you’re doing, _John_.”

“Oh, first name this time?” Hancock scoffed.  His palms cupped the back of her knees.  Nora yelped as he suddenly yanked, pulling Nora onto his lap.  She straddled him haphazardly, clinging to his shoulders.  “Are you upset with me, sweetheart?”

Nora shook her head quickly.  His hands were beneath her soaked shirt, peeling it off with such concentration he could have been doing surgery.  “Good,” he whispered, leaning close to kiss her neck.  Nora _hated_ how much she loved that little act.  It melted away any stubborn resolution that she clung to moments before.  “Usually you say my first name when you’re mad at me, love.”

“I…”  His fingers roamed over his breasts, barely stopping as he moved to lift her arms.  Nora couldn’t think straight anymore.  She fumbled with words in her mouth while he easily peeled the wet shirt off her chest, tossing it on the wooden floor beside his clothes.  “You…ugh.  You drive me crazy.”

Hancock went back to kissing her neck.

His hands reached down to clasp her underwear, hooking his thumbs around the band and tugging slightly.  Nora let him, moving each knee up so he could take her clothes off easier.  Hancock’s mouth fervently moved to her collarbone, layering the hollow on her chest with kisses.  “Tell me what drives you crazy,” Hancock suggested, looking up at her briefly as he tossed her underwear out of the tub.

“Make me.”

One of his hands roamed towards her inner thigh.  “I can do that,” he offered.  Nora’s breath hitched as Hancock found where he wanted to go, his fingers gracing her clit.

She couldn’t talk if she wanted to.

Her fingers trembled on his shoulders as she leaned down to kiss him, letting his tongue flick the inside of her cheek.  Nora would never get used to the sensation – his ruddy skin moving across hers, the precarious high that enveloped her when Hancock’s fingers entered her at an agonizingly slow pace – it was sometimes too much for her to bear.  Hancock curled his fingertips inside of her and Nora gasped again, this time releasing her breath with a quiet moan.

He continued at his slow pace, knowing full well that Nora was going to melt in his arms at any moment.  Her heart fluttered against Hancock’s chest, and her hips began to move in circles as she attempted to sink deeper onto him.  “I need you,” Nora whispered against his mouth, her lips quivering from pleasure, “Now.”

“Now?” Hancock teased.  He felt it too – the burning ache in his abdomen, a thirst for her that could never be quenched.  Hancock swore he’d go feral if he couldn’t have her soon.  But it was just too great tempting her, pulling his fingers out and rubbing her slit just to hear her moan.

Nora began to clench his shoulders tightly and nodded fervently.  “I swear to god, if you don’t –”

Hancock promptly pulled his fingers out of her and shifted her weight onto him in one fluid motion before she could finish her sentence.

They rocked together, covering each other in soft bites in kisses as Hancock continued his slow thrusts.  Nora’s jaw loosened as her hot breath lingered on his skin, her nails scratching at his shoulders.  She was so tight, youthful, unlike anything he has ever seen before.  Hancock had no idea how he was able to cling to someone this perfect, yet she only made him want _more_.

He thrust harder into her, watching Nora’s face change from a quiet desire to utter pleasure.  “Like this?” He offered, noticing her nails dug into his skin the harder he thrust.  He pulled out to the tip of his cock, which ached to fuck Nora until her voice was gone.  “Tell me what you want, sweetheart.”

“Like that,” Nora whispered, her voice ragged as she rushed to kiss him.  She cried out when he shoved, his pelvis meeting hers.  Her voice only egged on Hancock as she let him know what she wanted.

He continued to slowly fuck her, holding her face close to his so he could taste her mouth.  Nora moaned as the water sloshed over the bathtub, spilling onto the wood and dripping into the basement.  She moved her hips, taking him as deep as she could, arching her back as something simmered in her groan, flowering into the pit of her stomach.

“I’m so close,” she whispered as Hancock kissed her breasts, moving his tongue around each of her nipples in sync with their hips.

“Come for me,” Hancock told her.

Nora’s hips quivered as she stopped, her jaw hanging open a wave of pleasure overturned every bone in her body.  Hancock continued to thrust, quickening his pace as he began to suck on Nora’s neck.  She embraced his neck as he grabbed her ass, squeezing while a moan escaped his throat.

Hancock settled back down, releasing his hold of Nora slowly.  She stayed on top of him, her legs too weak for her to move.  They both gasped for air, grinning at each other stupidly.  There was barely any water in the top, most of it already sinking into the wooden floor and most likely marring it forever.

“Your water is boiling,” Hancock observed, looking over Nora’s shoulder at the cooking stove.

“Shut up,” Nora ordered him breathlessly.

Hancock laughed and kissed her jaw, squeezing her ass one more time before reaching for the soap to _actually_ bathe.

Some days, they cooked, they cleaned, and they read books on the couch.

And then there were _these_ days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a bit of ambivalent dialogue from your fave fic writer
> 
> i use all the drugs hancock gives me to fund building my settlements


	9. Jealousy

If Hancock’s estimates were correct, there were fifty-three things wrong with MacCready.

“It’s because you’re jealous,” Deacon told him for the umpteenth time as they scoped the empty bar for any eavesdroppers.  It was strange that _Deacon_ out of everyone had become Hancock’s friend, considering he already somehow knew everything about him, but at least the guy didn’t look at Nora like a piece of raw meat.  And for being nosy, Deacon usually left Hancock alone to simmer about how much he disliked MacCready.  Except tonight.  “Listen, I get it – MacCready has skin like an angel.  But obviously Nora doesn’t care about that!”

“Watch it,” Hancock growled.

Deacon raised his hands defensively, fighting a grin off his face.  “He just understands loss like she does.  And I understand it too – I’ve actually been thinking about forming a listening circle kind of thing, like group therapy?  Whatever, that’s not important.  Anyway, it’s just some similar feelings.  It’s good she’s found an outlet for them.”

Hancock quirked his brow.  “You had a wife, brother?”

“Who said that?”

“You did.”

“No I didn’t,” Deacon immediately replied, smoothing the front of his shirt with both hands before grinning at him.  “You’re being evasive, McDonough.  That’s not emotionally healthy and it won’t help you in the long run.”

 _This_ was the reason Hancock preferred drinking alone.  Maybe he should just stick to drinking beer at his house where Deacon didn’t have a key.  Of course, Hancock only _thought_ Deacon didn’t have a key.  He honestly wasn’t convinced the guy didn’t live in his attic or something.  “I just think the kid is a snarky little shit.  And I don’t like the way he looks at my girl.”

Deacon flagged the bartender for another round.  Cait walked in, briefly throwing a glance towards the two men in the corner before deciding to drink alone upstairs.  Hancock wasn’t offended.  If he had a choice, he’d probably avoid himself too.  “Oh, if you’re inferring that MacCready has feelings for Nora, then yeah, I’m sure you’re right.  But that could also be said about Cait, or Piper…or Curie…or that one settler – the blonde?”

Hancock withheld a sigh.

It was nice that Deacon was trying, sure.  But Hancock didn’t need someone to cheer him up.  Nora was gone for the next week, thrown into gunfire because MacCready had to get rid of some old friends, and Hancock had nothing to do but wait for her to come home.  And he couldn’t even clean her house this time because _Deacon_ happily took over that job when he all but moved into Nora’s old room and inherited the duty to watch Cait while the boss was gone.

All Hancock wanted to do was sulk about how Nora liked moody drunk assholes and MacCready _fit_ into that category, and he was also younger and healthier, and he didn’t get high all the time, and was generally a better option if Nora wanted a long term relationship.

But Hancock didn’t want to say any of this, because Deacon already knew so much about his life that it felt good keeping something from him.

This was one of the reasons Hancock liked to get high.  He didn’t _think_ about this kind of shit when he was taking a hit of Jet.  But Nora wouldn’t approve of that, Hancock downed the next beer that came his way and asked for a bottle of bourbon, hoping that Deacon was okay with guiding his drunk ass home.

From upstairs, Hancock and Deacon heard Cait scoff loudly.  They both ignored it, most likely out of fear of running into her mood.

“I don’t think I’m good for her,” Hancock suddenly declared, which he immediately regretted.  But it felt good to say, like it was simmering in the pit of his stomach for a while and just needed a release.  Deacon looked up from his beer, perturbed by the statement.  _Oh, don’t act like you didn’t know it_ , Hancock grumbled in his head.  “You know, with the face.  And the drugs.  I’m just kind of a bad guy.”

Deacon nodded his head slowly as he tried to think through it.  “Well.  Nora sees something in you, right?  So you can’t be that bad.”

Except Nora _also_ saw something in the deep, rotten heart of Cait’s, which was the reason why they became roommates and in extension, almost sisters.  So Hancock couldn’t exactly say her decision making was entirely sensible or sane, since she looked a drug addicted cage fighter and was immediately convinced they would become best friends.

Cait shuffled upstairs, huffing loudly as she slid the chair back into the table as she got up to leave.

“What do you know about her last husband?” Hancock asked.

Deacon pursed his lips dramatically as he pretended to rack his brain for every scrap of information he possessed.  The bartender set down two clean glasses and a bottle of bourbon between them, accepting Hancock’s caps with a sweet, toothy smile.

“His name was Nathaniel Thomas, he was an army veteran, made quite a bit of money, didn’t touch drugs but he enjoyed casually drinking,” Deacon informed Hancock, ticking each point off with his fingers, “His mother knew Nora’s from college but that’s not how Nora and Nate met, he had two brothers, he was going to become a bioengineer but he was drafted into the military.  He liked hunting but couldn’t eat wild game.  Apparently he was also a handyman, yet he was extremely bad at plumbing.”

Hancock blinked at him.  “How can you possibly know that, brother?”

Deacon shrugged.  “I live in the guy’s old bedroom and hang out with his pet robot.  And I also saw his handiwork on fixing one of the pipes in the kitchen.  He basically wrapped duct tape around a crack and put a bucket underneath it.”

“So he wasn’t anything like me,” Hancock assumed.

“I don’t know, you would probably have used electrical tape…”  Deacon trailed off as he pondered, rubbing slow circles on his chin with his hand.  “But no, the complete opposite of you.  With the exception of your shared taste in women.”

“So why would Nora want to be with _me_?”

Deacon snorted.  “It’s obviously your good looks and charming personality, Hancock.”

Kid all he wants, but Deacon didn’t know why Nora stuck around with the ghoul either.  It flabbergasted everyone why she chose _him_ when there were much better picks scattered throughout the Commonwealth.  Hell, even _Preston_ was a better person than Hancock.  At least _he_ didn’t have to have his face melted off to become a good guy.  Or a half-assed good guy in a frock coat.

“Can you two arseholes stop this shit?” Cait shouted from upstairs.  “I am trying to _drink._ ”

“Sorry, beautiful!” Deacon called, craning his neck in the direction of the ceiling.  “Come join is if you’re lonely!”

Cait grumbled something that sounded akin to a threat.  Moments later, she stomped down the stairs with a half-finished bottle of beer and plopped down in the empty seat at Hancock and Deacon’s table.  Tossing it back in a few gulps, Cait slid the empty bottle towards Hancock and grabbed one of the glasses of bourbon.  “Just so you two know,” she said, swishing the alcohol back and forth in the glass as if she was trying to find any hint of poison, “you are both idiots.  And neither of you know Nora _half_ as much as I do.”

“I know her favorite color is gray,” Deacon pointed out.

Cait glared at him.  “Why is it gray, handsome?  Why not blue?”

Deacon paused.  “I don’t know,” he confessed, shooting a glance at Hancock.  The ghoul just shrugged halfheartedly, already prepared to admit defeat to Cait.

“She likes the color gray because it reminds her of cold mornings,” Cait explained, tossing the bourbon back and quickly reached for the bottle.  Hancock handed it over without protest.  “And she likes _Hancock_ because he reminds her that a future in this shithole is possible.  Even if I don’t get why, she likes you.  So stop being petty.”

“Someone is being especially articulate this evening,” Deacon teased, leaning back in his chair to look at Cait.  “Have you been reading some of Nora’s books?”

Cait shrugged and raised her glass to him.

“How do you even know all of this, sister?” Hancock asked.

“I asked her.”

“Just…asked her?” Deacon frowned at the thought.

“Not everyone needs to spy to make friends, Deacon,” Cait shot at him, trying to hide her grin as she drank the last of her second bourbon.  “By the way, Nora thinks MacCready is, in her words, an annoying little mongrel.  She won’t be kissing on him for a time.”

At least that made Hancock feel a little better.

“What does she think about me?”  Deacon pleaded.

Cait frowned at him.  “Oh, you poor soul.  You might not be prepared for this.”

“Tell me!”  
Cait leaned her elbows on the table to implore Deacon with widened eyes, the drinks giving her a pretty flushed look as she gazed at him earnestly.  “Well, I’m not sure if you know this already, handsome, but Nora and I have never talked about you other than when she said you had to sleep in the room across from me.  So you’re not exactly special in her eyes.”

Deacon’s brow furrowed.  “Liar.  I know for a _fact_ I’m her second favorite person here.  Besides you, Cait.”

“And what about me?” Hancock.

“We both know you don’t count in this poll, Hancock,” Deacon muttered, “That’s just unfair if you do.  Cait and I can’t _seduce_ Nora like you can.”

Cait flicked her hand in the air briefly and ordered a round of whiskey and a plate of mutfruit pies, handing the bartender a small bundle of bottlecaps before turning back to Hancock and Deacon.  “So why was Hancock jealous in the first place?” She asked, cupping her neck with the palm of her hand as she leaned on the table with curiosity.  “Do you really think Nora’s going to look at _MacCready_ , out of everyone, and think he’s the piece she’s missing?  _Really_?”

“Well, she does have a thing for angry little addicts,” Deacon told her, shrugging.  Hancock said nothing, looking down at his untouched glass of bourbon.  He didn’t like having this conversation with _one_ person, let alone two.  Especially if they were his only company for the rest of the week.

“If her preference is someone who is drunk and angry, I don’t get why she just doesn’t get with _me_ ,” Cait reminded them bitingly.  “Or, you know what?  Nora should just go ahead and start making the moves on half the people in Sanctuary, since the lot of us are a bit pissed off.”

She _did_ have a point.  Nora could have chosen anyone – even _Cait_ – and picked Hancock.  There was something in him that must have been good if it got her to be with him.  Cait sucked in a deep breath and rolled her eyes to the ceiling at Hancock’s expression.  “Listen, I told her that she shouldn’t be with you because you’re a bit of a horrible person,” Cait told him, not withholding for even a shred of sympathy, “And yet she believed there was something good in that fucked up heart of yours.  So don’t ruin this for yourself, my friend.”

 _Nora believes there is something good in me_ , Hancock thought, taking a long drink of his bourbon.  It might not have seemed true – it was just too _nice_ to hear – but he took it for now.

 

Hancock might have hated MacCready for a lot of reasons, but there was one thing he couldn’t deny was good about the guy.

Nora came home without a scratch on her, not even a new tear in her pants or coat.  She hugged Hancock so tightly that he felt like his ribs could break, shoving her face into his chest as if she was attempting to drown out the rest of the world.  “I missed you too,” Hancock told her, stroking her cheeks gently as she beamed up at him after the hug.  “Where’s the kid at?”

Nora gestured to the infirmary where Curie was buzzing over MacCready’s arm, which was currently in a haphazard sling made out of his own coat.  “Apparently he is terrified of you,” Nora explained as they began the trek back to Hancock’s shack where he promised to make her dinner.  “So he took most of the hits for me out there.”

So the kid had a crush on Nora, fine.  Hancock took in a deep, painful breath and set his pride down for just a moment so he could wave to MacCready, who looked up at the two of them as they passed.  At least MacCready cared enough about Nora not to let her get hurt.  Or cared enough about his own life not to let her get hurt.  It didn’t really matter, considering he was going to answer to Hancock if Nora ever ended up in the infirmary after one of their little missions together.

And alright, Hancock suddenly felt the weight lifted off his chest when Nora told him MacCready was scared of him.

“So how was Sanctuary while I was gone?” Nora asked, unaware of the small change in Hancock’s heart.

“Uneventful.  By the way, is Deacon living in our attic?”

Nora thought the question over before narrowing her eyes.  “I think so.”

Hancock let out a long sigh and wrapped his arm around Nora’s shoulders, bumping her hip with his.  “Let’s go home, sweetheart.  You’ve got to hear this joke I made up while you were gone.  So, a ghoul walks into a bar…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this chapter is really scatterbrained, i've just had a busy day cleaning up after the holidays and u g h.
> 
> anyway, i feel so bad when hancock talks about how he doesnt deserve nora, and it's REALLY OBVIOUS how much maccready likes your character even if you dont romance him. anyway, thank you for all the kudos (i dont really know what kudos are, but they are good i suppose!) and comments and bookmarks and the like! this is all very sweet :)
> 
> see you when the next chapter comes! <3

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on my f!SS who technically has not killed anyone outside of a quest, which included animals and creatures. Yeah, I know. It's a difficult way to play the game omg


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